For what seems like months now I have like I was on the cusp of a cold. But it's never quite materialized. This may or may not have something to do with taking Niquil at the slightest sign of cogestion in the hard or lungs. Also, on account of sometimes I can't sleep.

I supposed that could be good or bad. As I may or may not have mentioned in the past I developed this strange anti-alcohol/tobacco/drugs-of-any-sort attitude in grade school. So if even moderate alcohol use would have helped develop some kind of resistance to related chemicals I was never exposed to it. What I'm trying to say, albeit poorly, is that niquil really hits me over the head. I took Niquil last night and I'm still half alseep. When I woke up my lips felt half numb.

And I don't know if this is related but I have the strangest dreams, concidently or not, on nights I have taken niquil. Between the dreams and numb lips the next day I'm starting to call that a "Niquil hangover". Not really a hang over since there's no headache of course. But it definately feels like a side-effect anyway.

Now some might say I feel tired because I hardly move all day and I should get the blood flowing with a walk or whatever. Ok, maybe. But I did plenty of walking when I had a job and I felt pretty much the same. I should exercise more.

In other slightly more interesting news I finally got my spare PC running SageTV to work. Took me two days and using apparently onld versions of the drivers but I got it to work.

Ok so here's the whole story. I had the whole thing up on running on Windows 2000. I had a Haupagge (that's the wrong spelling but whatever) and an Nvidia graphics card. I wanted better quality and to not be using Windows 2000 any more. So I traded the Nvidia GeForce 3 video card for an even older ATI Radeon 7000 card I had given to my aunt and uncle. Seems that card couldn't do the DVD player software but the nVidia can. Also, the ATI card has much superior TV out capability.

So for several non-congruant days I tried to get the ATI+Haupaggue setup to work with no success. Finally I said the hell with it the graphics card must not be good enough. I bought a much superior nVidia card for $45 at Fry's. Still didn't seem to work. Several more days later it wasn't working. So I replaced the Haupaggue card with an ATI 550 TV card. I was hoping an all ATI solution would yield better results. Well it didn't. I had same problem I did before: everything seemed to install but when it actually came to bring the stupid TV onto the screen or play a previously record show it would lock both SageTV and the whole PC up. And this would happen no matter which program I was using.

I tried the TV program provided by haupagge for the haupagge card, the ATI "Multi-media Center" from ATI on the ATI card as well as various "alternative" programs like "Media Portal". They all locked up at the same place. I was starting to think it must be the motherboard or something (except it worked with Windows 2000). So finally (with the all-ATI solution) I looked at the ATI "knowledge base" (which should be called the "ATI lack-of-knowledge base) for some actual help. Well it walks you through a set of installation instuctions except they're apparently out of date. Ya see the instructions mention four seperate files to download and install. But the download page for the TV card leads to a single universal binary. Which as it turns out trys to install both the graphics card and the TV card. Which is great except it doesn't work and the instructions don't even mentions that.

So I resorted to a google search to find links to those four files on ATI's site. Install each file, ignoring all errors, and then, some how ended up with it working.

Oh and Media Portal I tried and didn't like like so much. Ya see programs need things like a button to close the program and an easy way to specify where you want recordings to be stored without actually leaving the program. Or at the very least an instruction on some screen referring you to the right config file. Otherwise your just making something over complicated for no reason on all. I mean, what the hell! Looks like it has potential anyway.

I've been saying this for nearly a year but eventually I will start creative writing practice on the page. Taking random paragraphs and examining how they work line by line if necessary.

The next book I'll probably read is The Stand by Stephen King. Sure it's long but I've heard so many good things about it.