et alii*Step V.2
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
"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.
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
"Actionable Intelligence"
I guess it's been a few days since I have actually posted. I went to my mom's house this weekend; I was going to hang out with a friend up there. But it was his brother's birthday so I couldn't really do anything.
I did rent a movie I've never heard of by the name of The Returner. Judging by the cover I thought it would be a Matrix rip-off. But I thought I would like it judging by the description of the way too convoluted plot. Turns out it's a live action Japanese film. It looked and acted an awful lot like an anime flick right down to the costumes and morphing mechanized robots. Except for a few rather annoying touching-moments complete with soft piano music I did really enjoy this movie. The ending is actually very good. Actually there's at least two endings. The ending that you think it is, the camera starts to pull away, then something happens and the music starts again and it turns out much different. I liked that sort of unpredictable ending sequence.
For this first time watching I did leave it on Japanese speech with English subtitles, and that was fine; it worked perfectly. For the fun of it I turned on the English voice-overs and skipped ahead to some scene to see just how bad the voice acting and how much the dialog had changed. As predicted both the voice acting and the replacement dialog was absolutely horrific. Most people who would rent this movie to use the English voice dub-over wouldn't like this movie because the voice acting was so terrible.
So I finally started another class. It's called "ethical hacking" and it sounds like it could be interesting. No text book, only two units, I hope we get to something challenging soon.
The other things I've done since the last entry is finish this game I think I've mentioned called Dungeon Siege. The game keeps track of the time you've been playing: I beat it in 30 hours. And I took my time. I really didn't find it at all challenging. Every so often one of my characters would be die and I would have to resurrect them, but that's about it. Now I did have about 6 characters plus a pack mule for all the extra stuff. I outfitted all of them to the absolute limit of their respective armor abilities. You can't actually control any of the characters with the keyboard as in NWN, only select then point-and-click to move them around.
Towards the end of the game I traded in one of my characters for a new one who had some "natural magic" abilities and she became what I have coined a "heal mule". Her job was to cast a spell called "healing winds" every time any of the characters started to get low HP, causing regeneration of the HP rather quickly. This made way, way more easy. What I found annoying was a lack of a really in-depth plot and virtually no perplexing puzzles. You just go from room to room killing all hostile enemies. Talk to different NPCs to get quests, other NPCs to buy/sell junk then repeat.
It reminded me of an old console game I would play as a little kid. You didn't really care who the characters were or why they were killing everything in view, you were just having fun playing the game, thoughtlessly. And that's what this game is for: thoughtless play. I think I was entertained for those 30 hours so I'm not really complaining too much.
Seems ironic I'm playing this game instead of the game I will soon be writing a module for, NWN. Dungeon Siege and NWN are quite similar in many respects you see, except NWN is much more depth, including a limit to how much weight a character can carry, adhering to "3rd edition D and D rules" and all that other stuff. Dungeon Siege just seems too short, even for what it is. There is of course a re-package of Dungeon Siege that includes an expansion pack to continue the story. I didn't realize at the time I bought Dungeon Siege this would be happening, and Dungeon Siege at the time was only $20.
Fair warning, the following will be controversial personal political views:
I made the mistake of turning on the 9/11 commission hearing today. I had my expectations before I turned it on, and those expectations turned out to be largely accurate. The liberal/left wing types are feeling guilty, and worry blame will be placed where it should be placed: on an obviously bad and wrong policy regarding stopping and holding terrorists responsible. The leftists know this was and is the wrong policy and they know they are to large degree responsible for many deaths via this policy. So before anyone can accuse them they accuse and blame everyone else. So if anyone tries to accuse this policy or any of them personally it will look like a defensive gesture responding to an accusation.
The policy I am referring to is treating the terrorists and terrorist organizations like a criminal matter as opposed to a war matter requiring urgent, non-ambiguous actions.
And, of course, they know they're going to lose the election, by a lot. This prospect they're having trouble dealing with, so they're acting crazy and saying crazy things, even for them. They just can't deal with the prospect of more GWB and John Ashcroft.
The thing that really bothers me is that Bush will win by default, not because he's so strong.
I also found it funny one of the council members went on to blame Fox News Network on some information released discrediting the guy who was saying the things this council member wanted to hear. The funny thing is the council member said something to effect of "Fox News should hardly be on the air after such a thing was released" along with some mocking of the Fox slogan "Fair and Balanced". But I had just been listening to Rush Limbaugh who was also citing this Fox News document while discussing the most recent episode of 60 Minutes, Limbaugh saying something to the effect of "60 Minutes shouldn't even be on the air any more after this". I'm sure this was just a coincidence however. After all the commission was going on at the same time Limbaugh was on so unless the commission members had radios next to them no one was ripping anyone else off.
Friday, March 19, 2004
"No beer and no TV make homer something-something..."
You know this is a weird sensation I've been having lately. I think it started around the time I was writing in the blogs so often. I just feel a little better about myself for some reason. I've given myself something to do, an outlet, a way to express myself. And even more interesting I don't write down a fraction of all the thoughts that go through my head, even the ones I think would be good to put in a blog.
Speaking of which I've been working on the other blog. The short story I want to make into a module for a game called Neverwinter Nights. Come to think of it I don't really play that too much lately. Actually I don't play any games lately. I did, ironically, play Dungeon Siege the other day. That game is remarkably similar to NWN with at least one noticeable difference: no load times what so ever in between areas. And of course the play mechanics are much different and a different story. I don't think I've come to the actual story of the game yet.
As it turned out I honestly couldn't think of anything to write this time around. So this really short entry is it. Goodnight.
___
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
"Shake it like a polaroid"
Oh, look. Score one for cynicism. As predicted yesterday the full time job people called me back today and said there was no news or any word and when there would be news so I should therefore continue looking for other positions and not hold out hope for this one. So this is what I am doing, having attended a second interview just yesterday.
And on a completely unrelated note I'll brag about my Internet speed. Take a look at this screenshot I took:
No, I didn't doctor it up. Looks like ATI has a good connection. And I did too briefly. I couldn't believe I got that file that quickly, even on my connection. So I downloaded it again to be sure there was no corruption in the file and it downloaded at my normal speed, which is still extremely fast but not as fast as this connection indicates.
Well I liked that fan created music video so much I think I might almost be able to create one myself. Oh sure, he sees one fan created music video and he thinks he can do it. Pfff.
I think I could do it. I could take the poor-quality video deLuxe 2.0 and create a music video using nothing but footage from worst-movie-ever only. Now I'll just need a song to pick. Hmmmm. I could also re-dub the whole or a portion of the movie using audio samples from Whose Line skits. That'd be awesome. And it could only be an improvement! That movie is already extremely funny, a dub-over with whose line can only improve it. All the sound effects from the skits in which either cast members or audience members do sound effects, the soundtrack different songs from the skits, the dialog from the dub-over or foreign language translation skits...it could work!
So I found this little free utility called Microsoft Camcorder. I found it while search for camcorder mods when I was trying to hook up a 6-hour audio cassette I mentioned before. I didn't even know such a thing exists. Well it only works on Windows 9x, and I did try the "compatibility mode". I guess the API it uses is just too specific to Windows 9x. Or maybe running the setup program in compatibility mode would work, but I doubt it. Basically it captures everything on the screen into an AVI movie file. Not sure what I could with that exactly, just seemed neat for some reason. Also I'm fairly certain there's about a hundred programs out there than can do the same thing.
It's been a while I suppose but I know I read about the-French-looking "John F. Kerry" sending a group of people to Iraq to "assess the situation" and report back to him. Now I just have one question about this: why? Why actually send a group of people to report back to him on how it really is over there? Is three any doubt in ANYONE'S mind what this group of people will say? ANY DOUBT? So why bother sending a group of people? Why not just SAY you sent a group of people. We already know this phantom group of people will have a foregone conclusion before they leave anyway, so just SAY the group people just got back from Iraq, and that the situation is reportedly bad. The conversation may resemble something like the following: Names of the people? There are no names. How dare you ask NAMES of people. What, you're questioning my patriotism!? How dare you! I'm a Vietnam vet! What? I never sent anyone? Hah! I said I did, and I did! How dare you question my integrity! I'm a war hero! You can't question my integrity or my patriotism!!
It's too bad we don't have elections in this country any more. I guess this is like 1984, but the incumbent doesn't know what he's doing nearly as well. So he'll win despite himself and mostly because the only competitor will convince voters not to vote for him. What's the deal with that? But I am getting older, maybe I'm getting more cynical too?
The ironic thing is I could tell Kerry exactly what he'd have to do to win the election. He'd never listen even if he were going to listen; it would be so easy to beat Bush. Kerry's not interested.
"Ah no, am I on fire now?"
So today is my first of a possible two interviews for jobs this week. This one is an internship at a name-brand hospital or hospital-related branch. I'm not sure what they do there. The person who called me said it would be a part time, while the web site says full time. Neither the caller nor the web site mentions if it's paid. Unfortunately I didn't get the guys name or number so I could call him back. So if the other full time job doesn't pan-out I can take this internship, assuming I get passed this interview, which I probably will.
Now on that other job I've been talking about I still have no idea if or when an interview could happen. I really feel like I'm just being jerked around over here. First the interviews could be last Friday, then most likely Wednesday, now I'm supposed to call or get a call from a contact telling what if anything the deal is supposed to be. I don't have a good feeling about this. Doesn't feel good to be "jerked around" like this. It's very disrespectful.
As I've done I think once or twice before I'm going to try and write out my feelings and anxieties before this interview. This really shouldn't be all that much of a big deal. I think I'm getting accustomed to these interviews, as I didn't even have trouble sleeping last night. Most interviews I have quite a bit of trouble sleeping the night prior. But not this time. Am I aloof? Arrogant? A goof? I know I can't exactly say I'll be here and ready start effectively Monday since I'm still waiting for that other stupid job I no longer have any faith in. I will do whatever I can to get this internship so if the other job doesn't work out I can just start the internship. But if I do actually get the other job (assuming I ever have an interview) then I'll have to leave the internship rather abruptly.
Now especially if it's unpaid I know the people I'll be working for will be very understanding of my having to leave. Of course this internship has it's advantages, after all. For one thing it's only about 15 minutes from my house, assuming no traffic of course. The full-time job would require a lot of traveling. The full time job would pay a lot more and more than likely be much more long-term.
But I think it's better if I'm a realist when it comes to this. If history were any indicator the next week will look like this: I'll talk to the full-time job contact, he'll tell me the employer is not looking for someone with my work history of "specialized resume". I'll go to the internship interview, I'll think I nailed it, I won't hear from them. I'll call every other day for two weeks. I'll finally receive a call telling me they've filled all the internship positions and they're sorry they hadn't told me this sooner.
Ok this may be a bit cynical. It may even sound defeatist in nature. If my life were at all consistent this is what the next two weeks look like. Ok lets look at the semi-optimistic version of the future two weeks:
Go to internship interview, get internship, starting Monday. Full time job contact calls, see cynical version of events for the rest of it.
Ok here's the optimistic version:
I'll get the internship, talk to the contact for the full time and he'll actually have a time for an interview. Lets say the interview is scheduled for Thursday. I'll be assigned to start the internship on Monday, I won't find out if I have the full time job until next Wednesday. And what if they actually want me at the full time job? I'll have to explain why I'm leaving to the internship people, now won't I?
Ok more than likely it will be yet another week until I start the full time job. And will it work out? Oh, I'll make it work out. Why is it these full time jobs stop considering me before I've even been given a chance? Like they really know me and have given me a chance to ruin my chances (if you know what I mean).
Ok I think I've about worked it all out here. I may be ready for some interviewin'. Now, what should I bring? Awe I'll figure it out.
In other news I've finally placed the-worst-movie-ever on a DVD without any major screw ups. You see this movie I'm talking about, Knights, is only about 93 minutes long, and I don't do chapters because I've never really had to do so. I kept putting the movie on DVD but when I played it back at about 39 and a half minutes into it the audio/video would screw up and the sync would be off by 3 or 4 seconds there after. Even though the original MPEG I was using for the DVD would play perfectly all the way through, once on DVD it was screwed up.
So I decided to split the movie into two parts around the spot where it screwed up on the DVD. Then I strung them together using the DVD creator software, not Video deLuxe 2.0. This worked apparently. And I now have two chapters at least. Seems like there should really be a better way to do this. If I studied enough I could learn how to do chapters in Video deLuxe but I've had about enough of that program.
Update: 10:45pm
I just came across an absolutely terrific fan-created music video of an outkast song. I'm actually not even into outkast, but this video is really, really good. Now I could give you the file name to Google, but I think I'll just say you have to Google "outkast peanuts". The matches will probably be in forums, eventually you find a link, in that forum, to the a .mov file. Some fan took some clips of the old Charlie Brown cartoon and combined it with the outkast song so it's like the characters are singing and dancing to the song. It's perfect! But the Charlie Brown peeps have issued the old cease and desist order so it was taken off the original/official web site. But it's still out there. Probably on Kazaa/bit torrent/etc. also.
Oh and obviously I'm back from the interview today. I did some metaphors, made it obvious how much I enjoy helping novice users with computers, and tried to exhibit a little enthusiasm at the prospect of being an intern at this place. I'm not at all sure how I came across. The two interviewing me seemed really friendly though and at least a little impressed with me. They didn't give me any contact phone number though (and I asked too) so if those stupid flakes were to actually contact me (I'm holding my breath) I would have no way to tell the intern people. But I don't think I have much to worry about in that area.
Well it's 2am so I may as well go to bed. I hoped you enjoyed this entry.
Saturday, March 13, 2004
"Ading to it"
I'm sure this is real exciting to read as it is to type but I still don't have much to report. I didn't get a call from anyone regarding the good job offer again today. I am planning to call them on Monday and get some sort of answer.
In what might almost be considered news I did apply for "google ads" over on my story blog, and they actually accepted me. They must not look at the counters to see what the traffic is like. Or maybe the only requirement is to fit within some guidelines of basically "no porn" or other offensive material. In any case I now have a "commercial" site, if you can call it that. Which I won't.
Now I just have to do something to promote it not to mention send it through a few iterations and drafts to make it better.
I have now sort-of started up on yet another project I thought of a long time ago, and I don't even mind telling the world about it. Namely I want to take the parts from a VCR and put them in a new case with just the parts to play the audio from the tape, nothing else. I want to do this so I can record 6 hours of music onto the tape and play it back in the car or wherever. Even with MP3s on a CD you can't get 6 hours straight.
So i spent a few hours searching the Internet for projects related to taking apart a VCR and doing something else with the parts, with little to no results on how to something like that. Then I started thinking about "camcorders", the old VHS/VHS-C kind. Those already have the entire feature I would want in such an audio playing device: battery/car power adapter and convenient composite out connectors. The only disadvantage to this would be the size. So could I find a dirt-cheap VHS camera and cannibalize it to use just the play part, leaving the composite connectors? Well I don't know. I may as well just take apart my old VCR use the parts from it.
Most of parts I wouldn't need. No recording or video, so throw out any inputs or coaxial hook-ups and composite video, right? All that would be left are the "heads" for getting the information from the tape and the composite audio out for the sound. And a way to have it start playing. I don't really know how a VCR works, but that's a minor detail. It'd be nice to be able to do something like this. And fun.
This will most likely be really, really hard to do. I have a feeling there's all kinds of wires and circuit boards the size of the whole VCR case connected to the parts I would want to separate. And besides what kind of other container would I move it all to?
Well I was contemplating one of those automatic rewinding machines they sell at some stores and video rental places. I actually bought one of those tonight and took it apart to see if i was completely out of my mind. Well that really isn't practical, as it doesn't seem quite big enough. I also realized those rewinders are insanely simple little devices. Just a solenoid hooked up to a motor with literally a rubber band strapped around a wheel that fits into the hole of the tape. The motor spins, rewinds the tape and also lights up a small LED to indicate it's working. The parts for it must cost less than a $1. I bought mine for $12.
The only things left is that I finally have my own phone receiver. I bought a cordless phone for with an extra receiver and charging station. So without needing the phone outlet in my room I finally have a phone, one that will hopefully work unlike our current cordless. My new one even has storage for phone numbers and a whole bunch of features. And it was only $40, though an off brand.
Thursday, March 11, 2004
"job fair"
Not much more to report today. I was expecting a call from a contact "first thing this morning", but he never called. I've left 2 messages in the past couple hours so far. Then i called the other contact to see what was up and he said to hang tight and expect a call. And also the interviews wouldn't be until Wednesday as opposed to tomorrow. This place certainly doesn't seem very organized what the shifting interview locations, times, contacts and details. But it's better than not having anything lined up, right?
In other news, as you may or may not have noticed, I have added a comment system (along with a tool for easy "related link" implementations). Sure, go ahead and leave a message, any message. I already added one myself.
And also I have "finished" an extremely rough draft of the last chapter to my story. The last chapter being the first chapter I have written. So I now have my rough draft thinking out loud recorded in the blog and a nothing-but-chapter edition of the text. As always you can find a link to my story on your left or use the convenient link.
Update: 5:30pm
I just got another call from another employer offering an interview, this one on Tuesday. This time it would be as an intern and part time, I'm not sure I would actually be getting paid. And why did I accept the interview? What, am I gonna say "no thanks I got lined up"? I don't thinks so! I don't know if I'll ever even see this contractual one even come around. Hah! So why refuse another offer? And if I do finally get to the interview for first company maybe it won't work out or something so I'll have this internship to fall back on. If there's one thing I learned from looking for a job so long it's not to refuse a job offer or interview just because another job/interview is already lined up. So I'm back to two whole possible interviews. Now I REALLY want an A+ certification. I still haven't even started that by the way. And I know I should.
I stupidly got up early this morning expecting a phone call I never got, so I'm dead tired. That means this post will be significantly cut short compared to most posts.
The last thing I'm going to mention is the story about the Ex-Congressional Aide Charged With Spying. Oh, right. Guess the party of congresswoman she worked for. She's been charged with spying for Saddam Hussein. She sold out her country for an incredible $10,000.
Most relevant I think is this quote:
There, she met with several members of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, the foreign intelligence arm of the government of Iraq that allegedly has played a role in terrorist operations, including an attempted assassination of former President George H.W. Bush, the indictment alleged.
My only question is why isn't she being charged with treason? Why isn't she facing death for betraying her country? Why isn't there more outrage over the possible number of deaths she caused to American troops? Am I the only one asking these questions?
One thing I will mention that was not mentioned in this AP story is that this woman worked shortly for Fox News Channel. This was reported on FNC along with the actually story. I have no idea why the AP didn't mention this (I'd expect them to jump on it).
And you still doubt the left is bat-shit insane and they aren't even trying to win the election? Well I'm out.
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
"That's my job"
So I have news this time around. I actually might have some sort of job interview or something. For a job. How great is that? On Monday I was browsing Dice as I usually do and spotted a position I may be reasonably qualified for so I pasted in a cover letter and attached my resume and sent it off. Literally within 3 minutes the phone rang: it was the guy who just received my email. That's amazing. As I already knew this would be a position dependent heavily on travel, at least for the first month. Going around to branch offices of a company and taking inventory of the current hardware used in PCs. But the recruiting firm, or whomever they are, would reimburse me for hotels, rental cars and meals in addition to the wage of $15/hour.
Since it is a recruiting firm (or whatever) I don't actually know the name of the company I would be working for. That I will find out tonight, when a bunch of other recruits/candidates from my area meet with a "contact" from my area to plan (I think) a carpool down to the Bay Area. That's where the real interview is I guess. The guy who called me did mention I would be staying with one of the other recruits in this traveling around period. He also mentioned something about a training period. So I have no idea when exactly the travel portion of the job would start. In fact I don't know anything about the timeline, besides some five minute meeting tonight and something about an interview in the bay area possibly Friday.
I probably won't mention what company it is anyway after I find out tonight. Only under certain circumstances, certain companies would I do that. I also don't know if I'll be able to blog my way through the month long adventure, assuming of course I land the position.
I would like to mention once again I now have a new blog creatively titled "Mystery Short story" -- link to your left. At time I'm writing in this blog I have worked on it a lot and am almost through the first chapter, but haven't yet published it. I am starting at the end of the story and working backwards. You'll have to keep reading to find out how it all started. I know some movies have been laid out that way as part of the story but this one was designed that way. I just had an ending in mind but no idea how to start it so I started with the ending. Having one direction is better than no direction, or something.
I suppose I could writ about politics. If you don't like that just skip this paragraph. I've been watching these democrats go on and on about the "bad economy", blaming Bush for all the troubles. This is immediately followed by anti-trade, pro-tax hike rhetoric. Now how can you blame a normal economic cycle on a president but only offer the adamantly anti-business attitudes as an alternative? If you're "pro-growth" or "pro-jobs" you're not going to be "anit-business, large or small". You see what I'm trying to say? You can't say "he's lost all our jobs!!" while at the same time saying "pay more taxes and put up with more regulations businesses!!". It doesn't make sense. If you increase the cost of doing business in this country and make it harder to even conduct business how are you going to spur growth. It makes no sense.
There are two possibilities. Well possibly three. One is that this is simply the focus-group tested rhetoric that was deemed the most effective, which is immediately followed by what the Dems would obviously implement once in office, lots of anti-all-business regulations and taxes. Too bad the two things are often contradictory.
The second possibility is that the Dems are in effect proposing socializing all private industry, so every citizen would be working for the government. I think even the Dems can't be that dumb, at least not to propose such a thing yet.
The third on is that they're bat-shit-insane and/or know they're going to lose and don't seem to care. They want to go down in a blaze of glory, socialized everything and all.
I'm assuming the first one is the more likely scenario. It's not like they don't have a small army's worth of high-paid "consultants" and PR people telling them would do and say to get elected. Are the consultants not earning the pay? Are they dumb too? What is it?
Yeah, like I really care. In terms of odds I would say "the vegas odds are on Bush". But what do I know?
Update: 8:30pm
I just got back from this meeting for the job. I did a lot of standing around, waiting for the guy I was supposed to be meeting. But he finally came and talked to all the recruits. Four other guys beside me. I found out the actual company I would be working for. Sort of. It's a sub-sub-contractor. I'm supposed to get a call from someone first thing in the morning. So I still don't know too much about this job. Though I do know I could possibly start as soon on Monday, and apparently I don't need to worry about going to the Bay Area for an interview but about 5 miles from my house. Wow, how convenient.
Sunday, March 07, 2004
"Debarting to adventure :-)"
Now one thing I didn't mention in last night's entry (you'll note the date stamp of 11:59pm, heh) is how my server is now hosed. I finally scanned it for viruses, something I should have done a long time ago. It found a bunch and of course it failed to successfully clean them. So I had it delete all infected files. Which made the system no longer capable of logging in. I could actually get to the logon screen and put in a password. No blue screens or anything (which you would expect even from Windows 2000 Server after hosing vital system files). So "a-hah!" I thought, "I'll just restore the system via my ghost images! that's why they're there after all...". But alas, no! The ghosts also contained viruses in vital system files. Even the very first one from last July! It's all my sisters fault for using Kazaa. And my fault for leaving open full-access shares on my server and not install an anti-virus on both hers and mine before she had the chance to infect us all.
But that's neither here nor there. Well possibly here. I now have to re-install my stupid OS. But it's not even that easy, ya see. I don't have a bootable OS CD so I have to do what I did originally: install NT Workstation 4.0 (that CD is bootable), install the service pack, upgrade to Windows 2000 Pro, install the service pack, upgrade to Windows 2000 Server (horray!). Should only take 12 hours. I was in the middle of trying to install a fresh copy before I decided to go from scratch. You can run the install program from within Windows and it will reboot and go through he setup. But it wouldn't give me the option to format the partition, just delete the system folder. That doesn't much now does it? Actually the setup files it copied was the reason why it wasn't formatting now that I think about it. So I put the HDD in my other computer as a slave, saving the temp files from the setup and formatted the drive that way then copied back the setup temp files. I don't think it's going to work though. So I've got plans for the next 12 hours!
Now I could use this as an opportunity to "slip stream" the Windows 2000 service pack into the setup files and burn to a bootable CD. I am in fact sophisticated enough I could accomplish something like that. But it could in fact take the same 12 hours to actually figure out and I just assume get it done. Right? Ah forget it. Maybe I'll just play that MUD for the next 12 hours instead :-). OS installs for 12 hours! Now that's FUN!!
Update: 4:10pm
Well I've just finished making my SP4 slipstreamed bootable Windows 2000 Server installation CD. It only took 2 hours to finally complete it, and I only have 3 or 4 coasters to add to the collection :-). I did in fact much prefer this to the 12-hour version. It's so nice to be able to actually complete a task I set out to accomplish. Now all I have to do is re-setup the domain, install an anti-virus and making a workable Ghost image (deleting the tainted ones).
Update: 8:40pm
Now I've not only accomplished my installation CD thing I've actually done two things: created a bootable WindowsXP CD via Bart's Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) bootable live windows CD/DVD. The only reason I hadn't done it sooner is because I never did do a "slip stream" of XP's service pack 1 into the XP installation files. And a lot of the reason that never got done was because I kept getting read errors when I tried to copy the i386 directory from the CD to the HDD. But thanks to my unsuccessful attempt at making a custom-brew bootable Windows98 CD (see the archive under February 2004) I was into DOS enough I figured out how to use the XCOPY utility to copy the whole i386 directory from the CD to the HDD -- continuing if there were errors. Ahah! See the command line IS good for something. Normal Windows drag-and-drop copy doesn't have that feature.
So when I went to use the BartPE program I got one error the first time through because it couldn't find a file. So I simply did a search of my HDD drive for it and copied that file to the location the program expected it to be. Tried again and it worked. I now have my BartPE ISO ready for the burning. I've tried it on 3 computers so far (the server, my sister's which is a Celeron with 64 megs of RAM so I wasn't expecting much and my Dad's) and only my server worked. Not sure why my Dad's didn't work. Now I'd just like to further customize the installation. I HIGHLY recommend trying this out if you have any interest or need for a bootable Windows XP what so ever. For the record the XCOPY command I used to copy all the files was:
xcopy i386\*.* /s /y /k /h /c F:\WinXP-ProSP1a\I386\
Run on the command line from the directory immediately above the i386 directory. In other words if I wanted the files in c:\i386 and my CD-ROM drive was D: the command prompt would say
C:\>
and the command would be:
xcopy d:\i386\*.* /s /y /k /h /c c:\I386\
You could get even fancier and add a > output.txt to the end that way you can see what errors you ended with at your leisure and copy the files manually either from your HDD or search the Internet (I'm sure somebody somewhere has it).
I think that's enough lessons in MS-DOS for today!
Now I'm hoping I can use this successful command line used in the creation of the ISO to create the Win98 CD although this now seems more and more an unreachable dream if it seems anything. But I can't give up! I can go on hiatus but I can't give up. I've been a non-competent C++ programmer for about 7 years now, that doesn't mean I've given up...I'm sure I'll be the same when I'm 35...but not given up!
Oh look I've finally found a forum dedicated to boot from CD! And there's some sort of cult following behind BartsPE I just mentioned: tons and tons of plug-ins for further discussion. And I found this another article on bootable Windows 98 CDs that I haven't seen before. Perhaps this is host for this most hopeless of projects.
I can only really think of one more thing: a posting I made to slashdot.org scored something higher than a 2! Yes, I now have a post scoring a staggering 4. But just a 4! A "4, funny"! And I all I did was post a link and comment how said link had kept me sane during long blocks without tech support calls. You can read my post if you want. The site I linked to was Bastard Operator from Hell, one of the best sites ever, at least to overly frustrated tech support types.
Saturday, March 06, 2004
"And where do ya plan to stick that thing?"
All day today I played the MUD I mentioned in the last entry, Aetolia. One of the few entertaining moments it provided was my contemplating the mystery of my inventory and where exactly I keep my hundreds of gold pieces and all those rat corpse while I'm wielding a sword with one hand. I still have no clothes save for a normal belt and a pair of gloves you see. So my character is quite naked. And it's always required that you "stay in character". So "in character" where would I keep the corpse of a rat never mind many rats? Fine, fine...
I should also mention I have managed another entry in my new blog, Mystery short story. I have started a mock fan fiction of an NWN module that hasn't yet been created, or given a final name for that matter. And to top it all off I'm starting at the end and writing back wards, from chapter 10. I picked chapter 10 arbitrarily, I have no idea how many chapters the story will be or how many modules will result from the finished story. I actually have a good reason for starting at the ending: I already know the ending. I haven't the slightest idea how to begin it. So it only makes sense to start at what I know I already have and more from there.
The other problem is that I have never written fan fiction for anything, or even a creative fictional story for that matter, since elementary school. I'm talking more than 12 years in all likely-hood. I'm not expecting my "fan fiction" will be anything particularly spectacular, at least not at first. Maybe by the time I get to the end, the beginning, I'll be able to write and have something to work with. Did you get all that?
Lastly, since I don't think I have the creativity or am awake enough to continue much more, I would like to mention this movie I just saw tonight. The movie NO ONE has heard of or ever will hear of anytime soon. The movie is Knights, from back in 1993. I'm assuming it was made for one of those premium cable channels, most likely Showtime, as that's the one I watched it on. I can't imagine it came out in even a single theater. I also finally after a lot of search found commentary on it over at Amazon. This movie hasn't even had courtesy of being copied on to a 50 cent DVD for distribution :-).
So why do I mention it if it's obviously so bad? Well for one thing it is the BEST B-Movie ever made. It has to be. The dialog is just so ludicrous and delivered so completely seriously I just couldn't stop watching. I mean all those Showtime type movies are kind of like this, but this one is way above the rest of them. I remember a special I saw on the old Batman TV show with Adam West: how the producers asked him to deliver the ludicrous lines as if it were Shakespeare. And that's what they all did in this one.
And they have some really off-the-wall dialog and scenes in this movie. For instance in one scene the villain kills some nameless extra and starts walking towards the camera...and bumps into it. That's actually in the movie. And at the end of the movie as their highlighting the names of each of the main characters they show that clip from the movie. Of the actor walking into the camera.
And the sound effects? One of them sounded like it was directly ripped from the Star Wars movie. Namely the Millennium Falcon when it was having trouble starting in The Empire Strikes Back and the punches were something out of an old Kung Fu movie.
Oh and the music? Extremely generic stock sound track that I swear sounded a hell of a lot like MIDI to me. Why the hell would a movie use MIDI music? Even in 1993 they had better equipment then that.
Perhaps I should describe the whole premise: The "cyborg vampires" are threatening to take over all Mankind (If you're currently writing me to say "it's humankind you jerk" i can only say back "no, it's mankind...and kiss my ass") and only a mysterious woman with incredibly good fighting skills and a "good guy" cyborg with a single year expiration date stand in their way.
In one scene the female character goes to attack a cyborg with a long spear and the cyborg says, "Where are you going to stick that?" and of course blocks the attack. Right after this the good guy cyborg finally throws a knife and hits the cyborg in the forehead, the middle of the "kill zone" of the cyborg. At this point there's some ubiquitous sparks and the sound effects I mentioned earlier followed by the line "oh dear I'm on fire, aren't I?".
Now the other humans in the movie are either unaware small villages or will servants of the evil cyborg-vampires. But regardless it seems they all recently attended Clown College as all of them are wearing rather noticeable white lipstick. The cyborg-vampires on the other hand have kind of a Lawrence of Arabia thing going on with the middle-eastern garb in what looks like parts of both New Mexico and Canada.
Now this "good guy" cyborg (who isn't a vampire but has cripple-ware installed) is this "famous" actor Kris Kristofferson, who has been some minor and major movies but I guess is more famous from several years ago. My dad knew who he was right away for instance. He was in the Blade movies and had an extremely small part in the new Planet of the Apes. He was doing the whole Adam West thing delivering the lines as if it were Shakespeare, and doing it well.
It ends as if it is seriously expecting to be either a really long series of movies or a TV series or something. The narration was talking about long adventures through time space to the very edge of the universe. Sounds like a stupid cartoon or somethin'.
I've been doing kind of a toung-and-cheeck thing here in making fun of it. But I actually did enjoy it. In fact the next time it's on I will record it with my capture card and put it on DVD and export it in DivX format. I guess I'll be the only one who will ever enjoy this movie...ever. If you were looking for a good B-movie I would recommend this one. You can look up your local playtime at Showtime's web site.
Thursday, March 04, 2004
"Mud Flap"
I have officially not only added the no-robot meta tag to my weg pages but uploaded that infamous "robots.txt" file to refuse any and all robots what so ever. So take that. And now I've gone from 21 hits in one day to 9 hits to no hits. Thus proving just how popular my stupid blog is. And here I thought I should be worried. But at least the poor Google searchers won't get any false-positives when looking up whatever it is they were trying to find. Maybe once I'm listed in a the blog directories I signed up for and re-signed up for hits will improve. And maybe that robots.txt file was unnecessary.
Yesterday I managed to do a good job of wasting. Some how I got distracted on reviews for different online RPGs, which lead to links for MUDs, which lead to reading all the descriptions of all the MUDs, downloading special MUD clients and trying to learn how to play a MUD. If you don't know, a MUD is a "Multi-User Dunguen" (or Domain depending on who you ask). A good resource for MUDs is MUD Connect. Unfortunately this site uses frames for some stupid reason so I can't link you directly to a particular page. MUDs are kind of a throwback to the days of character-based story games. Character as in ASCII text that is. No sound, music or graphics, just plain scrolling text. You make a character and go from there. You get a read out on what's in the room and what if any players are there with you. You can converse with the other players if you choose. To check your inventory you would 'i', to check equipment 'eq'. To pick something up or drop an item you would use "get item" or "drop item". Well you get the idea. It requires a lot of imagination obviously and a certain kind of mind to be able to deal with that sort of thing. And being a good reader helps also.
Now to be fair there are many similiar kinds of games now available via the Web. And it works exactly the same way only you're click a button in the browser to attack that rabbit or get that update on your skill level as opposed to typing in attack rabbit or reading level updates in plain text. But there is something strangely appealing about that sort of game to me. You can simply play these kinds of games with the telnet client that came with Windows (I'm sure one also comes with Mac and about a hundred different ones with Linux).
[March 5th at 11:30pm]
I started playing a MUD entitled Aetolia. It has more than a hundred players using it, at least in the evenings, the tutorial to get you started is quite good and the other players seem really helpful and friendly. Basically this game is, in fact, a MMORPG not much different from EverQuest. EQ just added a graphical client on top of it. But basically EQ is in fact a text-based MUD. So with Aetolia I just don't get the graphical part and a lot more imagination is required. And Aetolia is free, of course.
In other news I have resumed contact with my friend over the new computer support business. I'm starting to wonder if this will ever get off the ground. Hopefully we'll have the domain name taken care of so we can start the web site and we'll finish the flyers etc. This just feels kind of wierd really. I mean I didn't hear from Steve for a whole week without explanation. I thought we had plans. How are we supposed to run this if I don't even know where he is? Just makes me nervous.
Besides that I still haven't done too much lately. I do recommend trying out a MUD by the way. Even if you don't think you'll like it, you may be surprised. I think I'll keep sort of track in this blog. Or start another blog! Or at the very least post the logs generated by my adventures. Who'd want to read such a thing I don't know.
I will close out tonight with a single link to the "worst fan-fic ever". "YOU ARE SAYING IMPUDENCE TO ME! THAT IS IMPUDENCE". heh.
The "I'm Bosley" is from a Whose Line episode. It was a good particular skit...
____
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
"i'm bosley"
I'm eager to report today's been the busiest day this blog has ever had. And only three of the hits were actually me. So without me that's 21 hits, in one day! But like I said the same counter is on my index and all those archive pages, and a lot of the hits are from people searching for something specific that I most likely didn't provide for them. So I added the meta tag to make search engines ignore both this page and all my archive pages. I also took the counter code off of most of the archive pages. So in theory from now on the only hits that register will be legitimate hits from actual blog readers and return visitors as opposed to unsuccessful Internet searchers.
I also have to report the first entry of my secondary blog I've named simply "Mysterious Short Story", a link is located to the left. It's for brainstorming a story I have mind but can't quite think of a title. I don't imagine much of anyone would find it very interesting but I've enabled the Atom syndication feature and "ping blogger.com" anyway, just for the heck of it. Tonight as of midnight I'll upload the blog with the official counter, Nedstat, enabled.
As exciting as those last two paragraphs were maybe I'll move on. Now I have no idea what to write about. Since I seem to be doing so much writing lately I was thinking about taking one or more writing classes at the college. There's "technical writing", about computer and stuff I'd imagine, then there's creative writing with short stories and plays or something. And finally another college course, in my time called "English 1B", involving a lot of writing but mostly reading novels from 300 hundred years ago in non-decipherable language. Writing argumentative essays without logical fallacy. A lot like the class I just took, English 1C. Seems like if I enjoy writing so much I should at least take a class and try to be better at it. Right? Too bad it's too late to start any of those creative or technical classes. There is one English 1B class I may be able to add.
I did think of a good idea for my computer setup. I found some software that will watch and record everything an install shield/setup program does to both your system and the registry, then when you uninstall the program it will do the same thing...and tell you how your system was modified and what is left over from the installation of the program.
Such an analysis can be used for both good and evil. For instance track changes in your registry to catch installations of trojan horses and spyware, as well as find out what sort of weird things the stupid uninstaller leaves behind on your system when it should really remove everything it put in. On the other hand some shareware programs expire after a set period of time but are merely disabled with a registry key or some other obscure place on the system. So by tracking this you can figure out what to change so the shareware never expires and you didn't pay for it. Now I would never promote such an idea of course, I'm mostly just curious to see if I could do something like that. Mainly I never actually use any one piece of shareware longer than a month or so anyway so I have no reason to try this work-around.
Though it pains me to write such a short entry after so many long ones, I want to go to bed. I hope you enjoyed this boring blog entry.
Monday, March 01, 2004
"the editor"
So it appears my little blog is getting some amount of hits these days, likely coinciding with my frequent updates. On the 28th I got 13 hits, none of them me. Since then I have had very few hits, around 4 a day not counting me. I was hoping the hits would start to become consistent after a while, consistent each day. But that has not happened.
I'm not sure where to take this blog at this point. I do have a couple non-sensical rants in mind I haven't written down quite yet.
I will mention I have finally set up a decent archive page all set up. So should the mood strike you to see what I was writing and thinking last April, go right ahead. It's hard to believe this blog is THAT old. Wow. You'll find a convenient link located to your left. The archive page looks much, much better but still isn't quite finished. I need to add an accurate "return to home page" link towards the top and figure out how make sure search engines don't use all those quotes as matches to searches. Also my counter is on each page and likely throwing off my stats.
As outlined in my last entry I did finally get that movie onto a playable DVD. Unfortunately the quality wasn't what I was going for and I didn't actually use Video DeLuxe. I got the whole movie chunked back together, looked perfect in the editor though I was nervous about the size. I tell it to go through the process, encode it and put on a DVD in SVCD quality. Should be no problem. It goes to put the movie on the DVD and errors out with a simple "error writing to disk". So I close down the program and bring it back up, click the giant SVCD version of the movie and nothing happens. Normally at this point there's a "scanning from number: " progress indicator as it scans and loads every frame of the movie. But not this time. So I try dragging it down to the work area and it shows up as only a 1 second clip, with no audio. So I'm hosed. But I do have EZ CD Creator 6, which as it turns out can make movies. So I use my newly created movie file with that. EZ CD Creator insists on sampling down the quality of the movie or telling me it has to use DVD quality, which requires more space than is available on the DVD. I tried telling it to use SVCD but it just says, "the disk is not a CD". Yes, I know that: use the DVD to make an SVCD movie. Why should that be so hard anyway? If Video DeLuxe didn't suck I'm sure it would do it. Than I was thinking I would put a CD in and then switch it with a DVD when it got to that part of the process, but I doubt that will really work. So mostly I'm stuck with a low quality version of this movie on a DVD. And again I can just here the rational person's thoughts: why not use a VHS? Bah!
I'm still looking for a job. I haven't heard from my friend Steve all weekend or all day today. I have decided I have absolutely no excuse for not being certified as both A+ and Network+. So I need to start that process. Neither of them should pose too much of a problem to get. I don't know why I haven't done this sooner. It's not like I don't have the time.
I'm thinking about taking this blog in a slightly different direction. Not much I can do about the title at the moment of course, I won't be buying a new domain any time soon. What I have in mind is a creative writing rough draft for a short story I've been contemplating for quite a while now. I was working on it separate for a little while via Word. Now that I think about it I think I'll just create a sub-domain and treat it as a separate blog. Maybe if I keep at it I'll start to finish it eventually. There's just so much planning that would go into something like that. And I need a title also. Perhaps I'll just call the sub-domain "story" and change the name of the blog as I go through various ideas for what the title should be.
Update: I'm doing this entry over several hours in an afternoon. I've just done two things: created a new sub domain for my short story brain storm, which isn't up yet and signed up to be an AllPosters.com affiliate. So the convenient link to your left is more than just convenient, it's to generate some amount of revenue via this site. I'll be surprised if I ever recieve any money what so ever from this affiliateship. So in all discloser:
I'm an AllPosters.com affiliate and they use "pixel shims" to keep track of visitors.
And what is a "pixel shim" you ask? It's a small, transparent image with the dimension of 1 pixel by 1 pixel (in English that means "an image you can't see"). When you visit my site this image will download, effectively sending a signal to AllPosters that someone has viewed an ad at an affiliate of theirs. Just letting my visitors know up front. You may not be aware an extremely large number of sites deploy such methods of tracking visitors. Visitors have never been known to fill in information necessary to more effectively serving the audience so this method was developed. I don't think it's that much of a big deal myself.
For the record AllPosters seems like a decent company for buying posters. So should the mood strike feel free to use the link on the left and buy some posters.
Another update: I've *finally* setup my subdomain for my story. Took me a while to get my FTP working correctly. Seems it isn't really possible using IE as you FTP client. So I used my favorite: ftp.exe. Then I had to figure out how to make a new FTP account for my domain and use it to login and publish the new blog via blogger. But I finally have it working. Here's the address: story.etalii-step.com. Haven't got much up there yet. But I soon will.
For the rest of the day today I am going to use Ghost to back up my C: drive to a bootable DVD and have some dinner (it's after 7pm now). Sometime tomorrow most likely I will start my new story blog and get started on that. I'm still planning on making lots of updates to this one however. So even though I would love to continue writing longer I am going to leave now.
