Nutshell

So you may have noticed, I haven't had much to say here in the last few years.  So the brief overview of my geeky life:  I've stopped playing WoW, I've resumed playing City of Heroes, I've obtained a Wii (but I don't use it very much), I still enjoy tabletop RPGs, I plan on running a new BESM campaign soon, I got a new computer, I changed the OS on my old computer to a Linux distro (Linux Mint, plus dual-booting my main computer to Kubuntu alongside the Windows 7 it came with), I'm still watching anime (but not as much as I used to), I've rediscovered my love of Doctor Who, and I'm currently engaged in a game of chess over Facebook.   For any who care less about my geeky hobbies, but may be curious about my personal life in rough chronological order:  I left Onvoy, I moved from Morris to the Twin Cities, my father died (October 19, 2008), I floundered around a bit working some jobs that weren't very good fits for me,  my roommate moved to Vermont, I paid off my car, I became unemployed, I remained unemployed for far too long, and most recently (as in this week) I started a new job that I am extremely excited about.

So that's been my last three years or so in a nutshell.

Now to keep me honest, the breakdown of the Facebook chess match with my friend Joel:

             Me                   Joel
             White               Black

 1.         e4                    e5
 2.         Nf3                  Nc6
 3.         Bb5                 Bc5        (Ruy Lopez, countered by the classical (Cordel) defense)
 4.         c3                   Nf6
 5.         d4                   exd4
 6.         e5                   Ne4
 7.         O-O                dxc3
 8.         bxc3               d5
 9.         Nd4                O-O
10.        Nxc6               bxc6
11.        Bxc6               ba6
12.        Qxd5              . . .

I leave you with an amusing video found on CollegeHumor (the ending veers into NSFW territory YMMV):

To Quote Homer Simpson, "Praise Jebus."

I had no real concept of just how much I use my computer right up until it stopped working yesterday. At about 6:30pm yesterday I restarted my computer, it failed to boot up, and I was rudely greeted with the following error message:

"Windows can not start. The following file is missing or corrupted \windows\system\vgaoem.fon.

You can attempt to repair this file by starting Windows setup using the original setup CD-ROM. Select R at the first screen to start repair"

Let me just say the use of the Recovery Console is not very intuitive. I mucked around trying to figure out how to fix this until about 9pm. At that time I took a break, went and got some food, and skipped off to the campus of the local university to apply some Google-fu to my problem. The Internet didn't fail me, and when I got home at about 10:30pm I was able to quickly replace the file. And when I restarted my computer - I got a dreaded Blue Screen of Death. My particular error was:

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

At this point I probably should have just gone back to campus and looked the damn error up on the Internet, but no - I like to do things the hard way. A few hours of frustrating tinkering later I came across a repair installation option in the Windows Setup. I gave it a go, and at approximately 2:30am I restarted the computer, and wonder of wonders it successfully rebooted.

Except it wasn't finding the drivers for my video card. Well no problem, I downloaded the latest drivers from the Internet, installed them, restarted my computer, and the drivers were still not found. Still not a problem, I uninstalled the drivers, grabbed the CD-ROM that came with my video card, restarted my computer, the video card was detected, I installed the drivers from the CD-ROM, I restarted my computer, and the drivers were not found. I spent another three hours trying different variations of uninstalling, and reinstalling the drivers from both the CD-ROM, and the most recent version from the Internet, and I became quite intimate with both Windows' Device Manager, and Hardware Updater. My success was sadly limited. Eventually I got the computer to stay at the screen resolution I like, once I even got the video card to run WoW, but after every restart I was back to where I started which was namely one of the following two errors showing up for my video card in the Device Manager:

This device is not configured correctly. (Code 1)

This device cannot start. (Code 10)

I finally went to bed somewhere in the neighborhood of 5:30am. I woke up again at 9:30am, and continued my fruitless attempts at successfully reinstalling the drivers for my video card. I started contemplating trying to reinstall my old video card, I also pondered the possibility of buying a new video card, and finally my line of thought centered on trying to reinstall Windows XP. I started looking up information on what would be involved with such an undertaking, which quickly evolved into a search for how I'm going to back up the files I really don't want to loose (and cannot easily replace). This finally brought my attention to the System Restore function of Windows. This seemed like a pretty good thing to try before doing something as drastic as trying to reinstall Windows, so I gave it a go, and at 1pm exactly the process was completed, and it worked. My computer lives again, my video card functions, video files once again play on my computer, WoW successfully runs, dog chase cats, cars, and bark at mailmen, and life as I know it has returned to normal.

I repeat the words of Homer Simpson, "Praise Jebus."

Let's call it 1-2 with a Walk

Suggesting the possibility of some sort of law of conservation of shipping time my SATA cables arrived a day later than the shipping estimate I was given. I'm relieved to be able to report victory in the installation of my new DVD drive, but it was far from crushing. Getting my computer to recognize the existence of my new optical drive was a chore. One would think that with three open SATA ports, one would at most only have to guess three times which port to turn on before the computer found my new hardware. Not only did my first three iterations through my computer's set up fail to get my new optical drive recognized, but for some reason my computer stopped finding the hard drive connected to the fourth SATA port. That resulted in fair amount of salty language on my part. Eventually the repeated turning of port 0 (the port my hard drive is connected to) off and back on resulted in the seemingly spontaneous return of the recognition of my hard drive. Once that problem was resolved, I turned on the remaining three ports all at the same time, and finally - for reasons I cannot explain - the existence of my new DVD drive was recognized. One final trip through the set up to turn the two unused SATA ports back off and I was good to go. For future reference my DVD burner is connected to SATA port 2.

So Tuesday night Chipple hit level 70. The process of getting her some good gear seems even more demanding and daunting than the process of leveling her to 70 was. I guess my next few steps with her will be earning enough gold to buy a flying mount, improving her reputation with the various factions, getting her keyed to the various instances, and maxing out her tailoring and enchanting skills. Once I stop being lazy I'll get a screen capture of her, and put it up. Although I'll probably at least wait until I've got my flying mount before I do that.

Going further back in time we last gamed on the 12th. It was a fun session, of course they have all been fun sessions. My character went on a date (of sorts), that was amusing. I guess after some of the situations I put Matt through in the last BESM campaign, the date was a bit of karmic justice (although it is worth noting it was self-inflicted karmic justice). Perhaps of more importance to the campaign we captured the apparent villain, not that we have a much better idea of what is going on, but we really haven't had much of a chance to question him yet. I do find, upon reflection, that I'm a bit surprised by how ruthless my character can get when confronted with opposition. All-in-all Cynthia is proving to be quite fun, and I always look forward to our next session.

1 - 2 and threatening to go 2 -3

My new video card arrived yesterday. I wasn’t expecting it until Tuesday so the early arrival was a nice surprise. Installation went much more smoothly as compared to my new DVD drive. I haven’t actually played around too much on either WoW or City of Heroes to see if I can detect a noticeable improvement in performance. I have experimented a bit with running WoW at a higher resolution, and was happy to note my new card handled that with ease (whereas my old card didn’t much care for me doing such things). Otherwise I’ve caught myself thinking things like, “I believe that images are much sharper now that I’ve installed my new video card.” However I wonder how much of that is real and how much is self delusion, but in any event I’m pretty happy with my new card. On the new optical drive front, I’ve ordered what I believe are the requisite SATA cables, so come Tuesday I should be ready for round two of its installation process. I hope to be able to post about my crushing victory later that day.

I finished off Pretty Cure last week. I don’t really have anything more to say about it beyond what I’ve already posted. I will reiterate that it is an enjoyable magical girl series, and well worth watching if you like that sort of thing. I’ll very likely be checking out the second series Futari wa Pretty Cure Max Heart.

Last night I watched the first two episodes of Spice and Wolf. I’m not sure what to make of this series yet, but I do think I’ll be watching episode three when it is available. The setting has a Western European, early Renaissance feel to it. The story seems to revolve around a traveling merchant named Craft Lawrence, and a Wolf Spirit/Harvest goddess named Horo who decides to travel with him because she feels the villagers whose fields she has been watching over have forsaken her. After two episodes not a whole lot has happened, but the premise remains interesting to me, so I’ll keep watching and see what develops.

Stupid things I do

I’m pretty sure I’ve touched on this theme before. This last Wednesday saw my latest example of enjoyable anime + disgusting lack of willpower equaling foolish behavior. Wednesday night I wrapped up my playing of WoW around 10:30pm. I needed to wake up around 7:45am – 8:00am the next day in order to leave for work by 8:30am so I could arrive by 9:00am. I didn’t really feel like going straight to bed so I decided to watch some anime. I have a pretty large backlog of series I’ve either been meaning to start or finish, and I decided I should check off one or two episodes from one of those. After a bit of deliberation I opted to watch some Suzuka (the linked review has some very valid points about the anime, although personally I found the characters to a bit more likeable than the reviewer so I’d grade Suzuka somewhere around 75%). I had watched the first episode of Suzuka last April and the second episode sometime last summer so I started off with episode three.

The next thing I know it’s a bit after midnight, and I’m thinking to myself, “Alright I’ve got to go to bed after this episode ends.” Then as I’m starting the next episode I’m rationalizing to myself, “Well once I’ve finished this episode it won’t even be 1am yet so I’ll still get seven hours of sleep.” A few episodes later I’m telling myself, “OK so I’m up too late, but I can watch one more and it will only be 2am, that’s still 6 hours of sleep.” A couple of episodes after that and I’m thinking, “What the hell am I doing up after 3am?” A stronger person than me would have gone to bed at that point; I kept right on watching. Sometime after 4am I went back to rationalization, “I can watch one more and it will be 5am and I’ll take a three hour nap before work, I’ve done that before, so I’ll be fine.” By the time 6am rolled around I was simply chastising myself, “This is stupid, I’m stupid, I’m weak, I should have gone to sleep hours ago, this is not the behavior of a responsible adult.” Naturally I kept right on watching more episodes. As it got closer to 7am I simply did the math, and decided, “Well I can finish the series and still have time to shower before I have to leave for work.” At about 7:50am the credits rolled on the final episode and the only question left to me was do I lie down and close my eyes for 10 minutes or do I shut off my alarm and go take a shower. I opted for the shower.

I doubt I’ll garner much surprise and even less sympathy when I say work on Thursday sucked – a lot. I think 10:30a – 11:00a was the worst; I had a very hard time not falling asleep, and concentrating on anything displayed on my computer’s monitor was somewhat tricky as my vision tended to get blurry. The sugar and caffeine from the ridiculous amounts of Mountain Dew I drank that morning started kicking in after that, and the rest of my shift passed without incident.

Surprisingly I didn’t go straight to sleep when I got home. I found I had a package waiting for me, the new DVD burner I had ordered as a replacement for the malfunctioning one that currently resides in my computer. I made a valiant effort at installing it, but was rudely stopped short when I learned I hadn’t done anywhere near enough research before I ordered this bit of hardware. My new DVD burner uses a Serial ATA connection; the old drive it is replacing uses Parallel ATA. Hopefully when my new video card arrives next week I won’t find I made a similar stupid oversight (I do at least know both my old and new cards use PCI Express).

Once I put my computer back together I decided to watch some more anime. This time I thought I’d play it safe and watch a movie (it was only about 7pm at this time but you can never be too careful). I watched Whisper of the Heart, a very excellent Studio Ghibli film (but aren’t they all). I had forgotten just how much I like that movie, and once I finished it I really couldn’t help but continue right on to its pseudo sequel The Cat Returns. Not too long after that I finally settled into bed for some much needed sleep.

A few random updates

Nothing really earth-shattering going on in my little corner of the world. So just a few things in brief:

From the better-late-than-never category on Tuesday I went and watched the new James Bond movie. I really liked it, that actually isn't all that surprising, I've always gotten a kick out of Bond movies. Now I liked the Pierce Brosnan Bond movies, but I have to say I thought Casino Royale was easily the best Bond movie since the 1960s. I’m considering actually picking it up on DVD when it comes out, which would be a first for me with a Bond movie. I found the free running chase scene at the beginning of the movie featuring Bond chasing the bomber Mollaka through a construction site and into a foreign embassy to be quite stunning. All in all I think the movie stayed pretty faithful to the original book, and I have no problems with the area’s that were expanded, or changed. The one element I thought was going to bother me was the substitution of poker (no-limit Texas hold’em) for baccarat (Baccarat Chemin de Fer if you really want to get technical), but honestly I didn’t have a problem with it when watching it on the screen.

I haven’t yet put my new chairs together, but I did assemble my new end table. I’m sure my mother will be quite happy when I tell her both my telephone and my answering machine are now situated on a table, instead of the floor.

I did spend some time over the last few days listening to some of the podcasts from Evil Avatar Radio. Evil Avatar is primarily a video game site, but they do have a sizable minority of comic book geeks there as well. I mainly listened to the various interviews with different comic writers and illustrators. I found them to be pretty interesting, and I learned about a few different titles I’m going to keep an eye out for.

I finished up the first season of Tsubasa Chronicle. I found it to be quite excellent. The season ended with a very interesting revelation about Syaoran. I haven’t watched any more of Samurai 7 yet. I haven’t decided if I’m going to finish that up first, or if I’ll start in on the second season of Tsubasa Chronicle. There are a handful of other series I’ve been eyeing lately, but I haven’t really decided what to watch next.

I’ve also been working on organizing the ridiculously large amount of pictures and images I’ve downloaded since I got my computer. So far I’ve been working on my anime screen shots, fan art, and wallpapers. I really need to start looking for some software to aid in this task. I’ve played around a little bit with Google's Picasa, but I haven’t really made any effort to explore its features.

I actually have a fair bit to say

Hmmm. . . Where to start. . .

Let's start with the sad news.

On Wednesday, August 23, 2006, jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson died. I was lucky enough to see him in concert twice during the 1990s. The first time was while I was in high school. He performed at SDSU in Brookings, SD (I think it was 1993). The second time I saw him was in a concert held in New Ulm, MN (probably in 1998). Man that guy could make a trumpet scream.

I’ve been a fan of jazz for a good chunk of my life and I can trace the origin of that to school. The K-12 school system in the rather small town I grew up near (I grew up on a farm out in the country) had a very good music system (especially on the instrumental side of things). Towards the end of the 4th grade all the children were strongly encouraged to go out for band. Those that went out (I don’t know how it is these days, but when I was in school the majority of the students were in band) had summer lessons before the 5th grade. Once school started up the 5th and 6th grades had a concert/pep band that had daily practices, and weekly lessons. The 5th and 6th graders performed at the school’s Christmas pageant, and if I remember correctly also a spring concert. After the school year ended the weekly lessons continued during the summer. In junior high (7th and 8th grades) they added marching band to the mix, and gave anyone interested a chance to try out for jazz band (more on that later). The weekly lessons continued, and marching in the homecoming parade was added to the Christmas and Spring concerts. In high school they started getting serious about the marching band aspect of things. Two weeks or so before school started there would be practice for both marching band, and the homecoming halftime show. The band director also sent us off to at least one state college’s homecoming parade (usually Hobo Days at SDSU). The pep band side of things also picked up a great deal. The band played at every home football game, boy’s and girl’s basketball game, and one or two wrestling matches, gymnastics meets, and volleyball matches. In addition the Christmas and spring concerts, there was graduation to play for.

Now when I started junior high there was just one jazz band featuring 7th - 12th graders (but mostly 10th - 12th graders), by the time I graduated high school there was a Jazz I and Jazz II for high school, and a junior high jazz band (if not a junior high Jazz I and Jazz II). The band director had even started giving jazz improvisation lessons to teach students how to improvise a solo. There were three main jazz band trips each year. A one day trip to the South Dakota Jazz Festival at Northern State University in Aberdeen, SD, a three day trip to the Black Hills Jazz Festival at Black Hills State University in Spearfish, SD, and another three day trip to either the Jazz on the Upper Great Plains Festival at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, SD, or the Coyote Jazz Festival at USD in Vermillion, SD. In any event six years of jazz band left me with a healthy respect for the genre.

My taste in jazz leans towards, but is hardly limited to bebop. While I don’t think I will ever grow tired of listening to the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Thelonious Monk (who may have one of the greatest jazz musician names ever although Cannonball Adderley is also a pretty damn good jazz musician name), I also enjoy Stan Getz, Dave Brubeck, Wynton Marsalis, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, and I could keep going, but lets not forget Maynard Ferguson since his unfortunate death was the genesis of this whole post.

So enough about jazz. . .

I haven’t watched any more of The Twelve Kingdoms because my online DVD rental service hasn’t sent me any more yet. I haven’t watched any more Tenjho Tenge, because I just haven’t been in the mood. I received disk five in the mail early last week, but so far it has just sat next to my TV quietly whispering its desire to be played. “Please put me in your DVD player,” it says to me. However I make it a policy not to listen to the pleadings of inanimate objects so I haven’t given in.

I have been watching some anime however. I’ve been indulging in what may be the greatest guilty pleasure anime of all time. I’ve been watching, lord help me, Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z. Actually Dragon Ball isn’t all that bad, it has a nice balance of humor and action. Plus I’d only seen a very small part of it before (I caught a few episodes when it was on Toonami on the Cartoon Network). DBZ on the other hand, Oy, it is so bad on so many levels that it just transcends to a sublime level of truly mindless, truly amusing fun. The basic DBZ story arc is as follows:

1. A powerful threat arrives and beats the crap out of Goku and friends (possibly killing some of them)
2. Goku and friends manage to either
      A. Eek out a victory only to learn an even greater threat is coming
      B. Stall, escape, or otherwise buy some time
3. Goku and friends train and become more powerful
4. Goku and friends fight the powerful threat
5. Goku (or rarely one of his friends) finally defeats the big bad villain.
6. Any dead friends not brought back to life in steps 3, 4, or 5 are brought back to life.
7. Repeat (possibly through in a filler episode or two) with even stronger villain.

The main reason I’m watching these now is because for the first time since I received them as a Christmas gift a few years back I can actually watch them at my leisure. I couldn’t easily watch them before because they aren’t legal copies of the shows, but rather downloads burned onto CD-Rs, and until this month I didn’t own a computer. I couldn’t watch them at work, so if I wanted to watch them I had to make a trip to the campus of the local university and watch them in one of the computer labs there.

So yes as the above implies I bought a computer. For those curious I bought a Dell XPS 400. I ordered it on the 11th, it arrived on the 18th, and I got my Internet connection set up on the 22nd. The fact my Internet connection wasn’t set up until the 22nd is the other reason I’ve been watching those two shows (you can only play so many games of solitaire and minesweeper).

My new computer has allowed me to indulge the closet CSci geek in me. I’ve been taking a bit of a nostalgic trip back to my college days when I’d play around on the university’s Unix system. This has led me to install several programs I have no real use for. I’ve added Pine and Pico, Vim, Gnu Emacs, XEmacs, and Cygwin. If I were an actual programer (especially one in the early 90s) I’d be set to go. I on the other had simply fiddle with them, but it makes me happy.

I have done a few of the more traditional things one does with a computer these days. I’ve ripped a few of my anime OSTs onto my computer. I’ve also installed iTunes and even purchased some music. Bringing this post to a nice circular close I’ve bought three albums from iTunes: Horace Silver’s Song for My Father, The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s At Carnegie Hall, and Maynard Ferguson & Big Bop Nouveau’s One More Trip to Birdland.