Getting back into it.
By admin | February 25, 2010
OK, so the last time I was on, which was roughly a month ago, I promised I’d be writing more. As you all can see that really wasn’t much of the case. Abject apologies for that…
That being said though, there’s a number of things, new and improved in my life. To begin with, my parents saw fit to buy me a new laptop for my impending 30th birthday. But not just any laptop, a new Alienware laptop. It’s decked out with most of the bells and whistles you’d come to expect from a $2800 piece of beauty. There’s only one or two minor items I’d change on it, but given that my parents footed the bill on this one, I’m certainly not going to be one to complain.
As far as work is going, things are alright there. Two new guys started, which helps to alleviate some of the obvious lack-of-staff issues. Plus, they’re both smart as hell, and both hit the ground running, so that’s a real big help for us, since we’ve been hurting in terms of both staff and workload pretty much since I started there. I also got a new desk at work. It was smaller than my pervious one, but unlike most people who see the size of one’s desk as a status symbol, I’m not complaining. Why, you ask? Because my boss got the desk immediately adjoining mine, and he’s bar none, one of the coolest bosses I’ve ever worked with. He even plays World of Warcraft with me, which I heartily enjoy.
On the personal life front, I’m preparing for a trip to Gen Con this year. For the benefit of those asking “What in the name of all that is good and right in the Universe is Gen Con?”, it’s the largest gaming convention in the world. It’s been held annually in Indianapolis for several years now, and I’ve finally decided to attend. I got my badge squared away, and now just have to get the money together for a hotel room. Being that Gen Con is in August, that shouldn’t be a problem at all, especially since I’ll be getting my tax return in the very near future. That by itself, should put me halfway towards a nice suite there for the 4 days I’ll be there.
Movie-wise, I haven’t really heard or seen anything that peaked my interest, but this year does hold several promising movies. Among them are Iron Man 2, which in addition to having Robert Downey Jr. reprising his role, includes Scarlett Johannsen and Mickey Rourke. There’s also Alice In Wonderland, which opens in just a couple of weeks. I can’t wait to see what stuff Tim Burton dreamed up beyond what I’ve already seen in the trailers. Another one I’m anxious to see is the Clash of the Titans reboot. I remember seeing the original and was totally entranced by it. From what I’ve been gathering, this one’s a lot darker and grittier. Then of course, there’s the last Harry Potter book being released into a two part film. OK, I admit it, I like the series. Didn’t read the books, but I just liked the movies, since it seems to fit so darn well into World of Warcraft-esque stuff 
Oh yes, and speaking of which, this November, the next expansion of World of Warcraft is coming out. It’s called Cataclysm, and it adds two playable races, the goblins and the worgen, to the mix. The general consensus right now is that the Worgen will have Thriller as their dance, and I sure hope so because one thing I’m really aiming to see is a mass of were wolves doing Thriller on YouTube.
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It’s certainly been a while
By admin | January 25, 2010
OK, so I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to update with the latest and greatest happenings. I managed to survive another Christmas with the family, and got a couple nice presents to boot.
The best one though by far was the 30″ widescreen monitor. My parents and I split the cost of it, and to say I love this thing is an epic understatement. I’ve been meaning to get a new one for myself anyway since my old one had several bruses on the screen, and in general it was showing it’s age.
Besides that, work has been crazy hectic as usual. In the last few weeks, I’ve had to contend with several dozen moves, along with training two new guys that started right around the new year. They’ve been a big help in the moves, as well as the guys who are actually pulling their weight in the department. I didn’t get much of a COLA raise, but that’s to be expected considering 2009 wasn’t an election year. Beyond that, I’ve got several more moves to do at work, laptops galore to fix, repair, or generally get to people who really don’t need them, but went “Ooooh shiny!” and decided they had to have one.
Well, that’s about it for now. I guess I’d better go back to playing WoW.
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Video Picks Of The Week (November 7th)
By admin | November 8, 2009
I rediscovered a couple songs I listened to in the 80’s and upon finding these, I must’ve listened to them both a dozen times. Enjoy!
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Video Pick of the Week (11/1)
By admin | November 1, 2009
OK, so I know Halloween was yesterday, but I figured, I’d include a couple Halloween classics as one last hurrah. Enjoy:
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I have good news…
By admin | October 31, 2009
I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to… just kidding!
I’m finally done with converting all my CD’s into FLAC format, and got the remaining files transferred over to my new NAS server, which I’ve affectionately named R2D2. Between handing out candy for Halloween trick or treaters, I’ve stated in earnest on now converting the CD’s into MP3 format. On the CD’s I myself have purchased, I’ve gotten to the M’s, and still have about 85 CD’s to go just for my personal collection. Once I’m done with those, I’ve got my brother in law’s to do yet, which is more than twice the size of my own collection. Thankfully, he’s got a handful of repeat CD’s and ones I also have, so that should cut down a little bit on the time needed, but it’s still quite a task.
Anywho, back to handing out candy, watching the Ghost Hunter’s Live countdown, and ripping CD’s
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Getting some FLAC
By admin | October 25, 2009
The last couple weeks, I’ve been slowly but surely ripping all the CD’s I have into FLAC format. It’s a little different than MP3’s in that it’s not a compression format, but an encoding format. Nothing really is removed or compressed, so it sounds identical to the original CD, and the sound is incredible. As you can guess, it’ll take up more hard drive space than MP3’s, but it’s all good for me, because of my new NAS server. It’s got 2 terabytes worth of space on there, and has space for 6 more hard drives, meaning I can expand it by 12 more terabytes. I’m estimating all the CD’s I have will take up around 275 gigabytes, which is barely 15% of the drive space of the first drive. Between that and everything else I have on it, I’ll take up barely 25% of the drive, even if I redo all the CD’s into MP3’s, which I’m a little more than tempted to do
And I now return you to your regularly scheduled boredom!
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Getting there…
By admin | October 18, 2009
I’m slowly but surely getting better. I decided to go back to work last week, and it wasn’t all that great for my voice. I managed though, and I think I’m on the mend, especially after I changed to a different cough syrup. I figure 1 more week or so, and I’ll be back to 100%
To bide my time, I’ve been re-ripping my CD collection in FLAC format. I tweaked the command lines to give the files a better sound, and noticed a difference right away. I’ve already gone through several hundred CD’s thanks to the fact I found a place that sold a brand new Plextor PX716SA drive. I snapped one up right away, and it’s making all the difference. I’ve gone through two full books of CD’s so far this weekend, and have one more full book to go. I’ll likely do the CD’s again in MP3 format, just because I can
Besides that though, not too much else. I’m hoping that my time off gets approved for the holiday’s, since my dad’s coming for Christmas, and I haven’t seen him since last Christmas break. I also requested the day after Thanksgiving off, so I’ll have a nice 4-day weekend to spend with the familia.
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That was easy!
By admin | October 11, 2009
Given my bent for all things computer related, I know that even things that sound simple on paper can get pretty complicated pretty quickly. However, this wasn’t the case this morning. I got my NAS media server app set up this morning, mainly to have my Playstation 3 connect up to it. Literally before I could even get out of my chair, my Playstation 3 had already connected up to it and detected all the music, photos and videos I had on it. That was seriously easier than I thought.
This was especially the case in times past when I tried to connect up my Xbox 360 to my computers several times, often to no avail. Guess Micro$oft could learn a thing or three from this
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All wired up with nowhere to go
By admin | October 11, 2009
It’s past 2 AM, and right now, I can’t sleep at all. I literally don’t even feel tired.
Who knows, maybe it’s just my brain realizing I’m getting better and wanting to catch up on stuff i’ve been meaning to do for a few days now, but couldn’t since I’ve been cooped up at home the last few days due to this triple damned laryngitis. For the record though, I’m getting significantly better. My sore throat is all but gone, and I still have the occasional coughing fit, which still hurts, but not as badly as before. My voice is pretty much back to nrmal as well, which is always a good thing.
Along the good side of things, I also got my NAS storage server Friday morning, and got it set up in short order. I bought a 2 TB drive to go with it, and it’s working like a champ. Getting it set up and working on it definitely helped to take my mind off being sick. I tweaked my computer to not run all the cumbersom Windows stuff and ran some benchmarks, and was able to move files over to it at around 45-50 MB/s sustained, which over a gigabit connection, isn’t bad at all! I’m glad I got too when I did because I was worried I’d never get one but the stars seemed to align for it, and actually, ordering it when I did sure did help me with the whole not being bored and stircrazy when I was sick. Plus, the nice thing is that with it, I can access any of the files on it from anywhere in the house where I can get a network connection.
Oh yes, and on a slightly weird note… I had two Lutherans come to my door, and wanted to talk to me today about religion. Since I was in hardly in any position to talk (literally and figuratively due to the laryngitis and the fact I just got out of the shower), and I really don’t much like talking about religion anyway, I had to tell them “Thanks but No Thanks.” I’ve always viewed religion as a private matter and subscribed to the “Keep thy religion to thyself” mantra of George Carlin, but that still hasn’t stopped the occasional Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness, and even a Scientologist, to come to my door and talk to me about finding religion. However, now I can add Lutherans to the list. Again, I’ve got absolutely nothing against people who follow the beliefs of their choice, except for maybe Scientologists. Being a computer guy into science fiction, having looked at some of the stuff Scientologists aspouse, that sort of stuff would even be voted down for a showing on the Syfy channel at 3 AM. Some of the stuff I was reading didn’t just make the Twilight Zone theme run through my head, I was half convinced it was doing a marathon up inside ye olde cranium. That and I haven’t seen a single movie of Tom Cruise’s since Top Gun. I did rather enjoy “Trapped In The Closet” though…
But I digress. I’ve also been noticing the leaves have been changing, which is always a nice thing to sit and watch. My house is on top of a hill, and the front door looks across to the other side of a valley. The views look awesome, and I can really see the leaves changing. Once I’m up for it, I’ll try and take some shots of the vista, and post them up to share with everyone. I’m also hoping that the weather cooperates for the next few days. Today’s been the first sunny day in what feels like forever, and based on what the weather gurus are saying, it looks like there’s a major cold front coming through in very short order. So who knows, before long, I may be seeing a bit of snow on the ground.
And on a final and equally random note, I found a place online that actually sells a brand-new, in-the-box Plextor 716SA. I was so excited I nearly closed the browser window, but I managed to bookmark it, and I’ll be purchasing it soon. They sure are getting harder and harder to find, but I swear by the drive for all my CD ripping needs, and I wouldn’t go with anything less
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Not too hot…
By admin | October 8, 2009
Yesterday, I ended up having to go to the ER for several hours because I was having some nasty (and painful) coughing fits that just wouldn’t go away, and my voice was so raspy, it was barely even there. The doctor said I had an acute case of laryngitis, seeing as how suddenly it hit me. He ruled out the flu or anything else, and gave me steroids to help the swelling in my throat.
So basically, I’m at home for the next five days, recuperating. The steroids have been helping, but I’m still coughing like hell, and I hope it goes away soon. The last thing I need is to be sick.
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