Try this link.

[Update: "XP compatible hardware" didn't turn out to be the real issue, but it's a good idea to check the HCL for your OS before installing hardware anyway. This post came out more sarcastic than I intended it to be, but superficially, the answer seemed obvious. Just goes to show, don't assume facts not in evidence...]


201 posts on the AnandTech Forums.

Enough of that. As promised, here're my Washington DC pictures. (149 kB! Choke on that, dial-uppers!) We went to the play/ musical "Chicago" (with real, live actors!) the second night there. It was really good. We saw it at the National Theater.

The highway from Richmond, VA to Washington DC. See all the trees? The humidity there is tremendous! The sweat just sticks to you instead of evaporating. Really made me appreciate Pasco's dry heat.	This scene was just a block from our hotel. On the left is the National Air & Space Museum and the Hirschord Gallery (the round building). In the distance, you can see the Washington Monument.
The Library of Congress. This was taken from a tour bus we took on Friday the 13th. Tour busses are great.	The Capitol. The park this was taken from was right across the street from...
...the National Gallery. Here, we saw paintings by Monet, Cassatt, Rembrandt, and lots of other famous dead people. The main hall in this building is huge. And on the inside they have black marble pillars holding up that dome. A fountain with a bronze statue of Mercury sits in the center.	Me at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
The Lincoln Memorial. This thing is really, really big. Actually, all the buildings in Wa DC are. Practically every govt. building has huge columns, balustrades, arches, domes, or some other hideously expensive Roman neo-classical architectural feature.	The inevitable picture of me in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
Some canal in Georgetown. We had lunch at an Italian place overlooking it. Our bus driver pulled over later and showed us around.	The National Cathedral in Georgetown. Really huge. And it's right in the middle of this big residential area. Kinda strange. It's 301 feet tall and took 83 years to build.
I think this is the Dept. of Justice. Or the Supreme Court. Or both. I dunno, I'm too lazy to Google it. Impressive though, huh?	The Smithsonian.

Well, that's about it. It was a pretty good trip except for the fact that I took a minimum of two cold showers a day due to the heat and humidity. We stayed at the Holiday Capitol. Some old lady at a bus stop started telling me she was hungry and asked for my doggie-bag from Chiang Charlie's (a Chinese place near the Farragut West metro stop; very good Moo Goo Gai Pan)... it was weird cuz I didn't stop or anything, I was just walking by... and she didn't look destitute or anything. Strange. (Of course I gave it to her.)

All my attempts to have sushi were thwarted by the local places' bizarre hours. But the Air & Space Museum was really cool. They a couple Russian and American nuclear rockets from the 80s on display, and a lunar module from Project Apollo. And we saw the spot at the Hilton where Reagan got shot... and the Watergate... and the Friendship Gate from Beijing. All very interesting. If anyone wants a CD of the pictures (hey, it's possible), just ask.

Oy, long post.

The formerly putrid-smelling carpet. Now, non-stinky.


Vacuum, steam cleaner, shampoo, Carpet Fresh powder, Neutra-Air spray, Kids 'N Pets solution. (Not pictured: 33.81 oz. bottle of Febreze.)

• The Washington Monument
• The Lincoln Memorial
• The Smithsonian
• The White House
• Federal Bureau of Investigation (935 Penn. Ave.)
• Bureau of Engraving and Printing
• Mount Vernon

We'll see if my family actually gets around to all of those. I was reading the rules for Settlers of Catan last night... I really want to play the game now. It seems to be a lot simpler than it looks. This weekend we played a lot of Lunch Money (even a couple or three games with Phillip's cousin and her SO; Chelsea and Oscar). We also had one very long game of Munchkin. I won, but only with Ryan's help. Oh, and the highschoolers had their graduation ceremony on Saturday. Friday's dinner was exceedingly good, IMHO.

Hanwool showed me this neat web site/article by Scott Fisher: Journey into Kimland. It's about this graduate student and some of his friends and their trip to North Korea. It's very interesting, didactic. Pretty funny too. From page 10:

We finally got a chance to enjoy a couple of beers and even blow off some steam with the guy on the tour who was most obviously the Worker's Party hack. Easily identified by his Kim Jong-il style bouffant hairdo and habit of wearing one-piece jumpsuits. The guy even had the same ample paunch and capped teeth!

Maybe that's not the best quote, but I'm too lazy to look for a better one. Been playing Warcraft III some more. Had a conversation with a kid from Singapore. He said they mostly speak English there. The place sounds a lot like America, to hear him tell it.

Jones bought Once Upon a Time at IF today. I got Settlers of Catan and Lunch Money. Once Upon a Time is pretty fun. Our first couple games were messed up, but towards the end we got really good at it. It'd be great with more ppl (it was just Ryan, Drew, and I). Then we played approximately 52,395,230 games of Munchkin/ Star Munchkin. Okay, maybe closer to 4 with Jones and Drew. But then Drew couldn't stand that I'd won every game, so he played me like 4 more games after Jones left. I got him to bet a double-cheeseburger on the last one. Of course, I beat him every time.

All the highschooler ppl have their graduation on Saturday. I know Beefy and I are going; I think we can drag others to it as well though. My mom's going to Pullman with my sister tomorrow (today) to look at her house. Or move stuff there. Or something. All I know is that they want the digital camera, so I need to remember to get it back before Saturday afternoon.

I'm gonna discontinue my semi-regular "Today's MP3" featurette. I can't remember all the songs I've already done (resulting in duplicates) and it's prolly boring/ clutter/ annoying to the rest of you. So I need a new feature. Maybe "Haiku of the Day?" We'll see how that works. Suggestions? (My haikus suck, BTW.) Hanwool, Ryan, and I watched Treasure Planet last night. A little too mushy, but very nice to look at.

I ran across a TXT file in My Documents. Had my Charter e-mail acct. info in it... I realized I never set that up, so I did so. I'm trying to keep it spam-free, so I'm not going to link it here. Instead, you can type it in manually from this image if you're so inclined:

I have Outlook set up to check all my accounts when I open it, so I'll get anything sent there. Actually, chances are that I'll see e-mail sent to the Charter address slightly more frequently than that sent to the Hotmail acct. since it's less likely to get lost in so many megabytes of spam. Anyway. Jones, me, and some of the other guys are going to Rattlesnake Mountain Brewing Company tomorrow night for dinner. I actually got an invitation to Jones's graduation, so I'm buying him dinner (Teriyaki steak! OMG it's so good...). Everyone involved, be here at 7:00 p.m. If anyone else wants to come, call me early in the day and I'll have them update the reservation.

I hear Ryan, JD, and all the other highschooler seniors passed their test to graduate. Hooray. Ryan's coming over to party. Or something. Work continues on the TCPC site. I've finished building the internet/wireless PC. Now I just have to do the partitioning-OS-driver stuff. Got my 1000' CAT5 bundle in the mail. It came with an RJ45 crimper and an ethernet/coax tester for free (and the CAT5 was only $38; what a deal). Anyone wanna buy 'em off me before I eBay them?

Anyway. I was bored and I drew this. It's pathetic, I know... but it's still at least as good as some of the Keenspot crap out there. Well, whatever.


IANAC.

Didn't make it to my free MCSE test yesterday in Moses Lake. Had a lot of work to do (building computers for ppl, making a new website, purchasing stuff for ppl online, etc.). I'm not sure if my car would've made it to Moses Lake anyway. www.tricitypoloclub.org is up though.

Bought a lot of hot dog makings at WinCo for $3.44, so that's what I had for dinner last night and lunch today. They're not bad, but the George Foreman grill doesn't seem to cook them very well. And there's no way I'd boil them... I don't think they're very good like that. Grilling's the only way to go. A few hot dogs with a couple bottles of cold green tea; it's suits my palate.

Been playing some Warcraft III lately. It's okay. Kinda want to LAN again. I'm getting a Cobalt Flux pad. Can't wait. I've also got a couple bids going on eBay for some American PS1 DDR games (though I'm considering investigating how to play Japanese imports). Did you hear they're making DDR for the Xbox? Supposedly, it'll be coming out in late October. According to IGN (yeah, they suck, I know), the game will come "complete with Xbox-exclusive modes, all-new songs and the ability to download tracks, characters and dance steps off Xbox Live."

Hanwool, Jones, and I went to the mall last Friday to play on the dance machine at Fun 'n' Games. It's this weird Korean thing called Ez2Dancer (pictured below). It has 2 dance pads with 3 step spots each and light sensors that you have to swing your arms over/under. It's pretty fun, but more expensive than the DDR at Go Bowl ($1 for 1 game; if you fail, you lose your credits, but you can play 3 songs total if you win). We had dinner at the food court (USA Subs; I had the French Dip). We discussed what it would cost to start an arcade... prolly about $20,000 just for the machines. Seems like it'd be hard to make a profit on it.

There's a lot of "Engrish" in Ez2Dancer... in this one song ("My Summer Love," I think), there's this comic strip playing out in the background. A guy says (in a word bubble) "How much do you love me?" The girl throws her arms up in the air and screams "It's many!" We laughed about that one for a while. Towards the end, we found we'd acquired all these little-girl-groupies. Kind of embarrassing. This one girl kept yelling at us to play again because she wanted her friends to see. Pretty funny, but we left. It's hard to play dancing games w/ ppl watching you.

I was thinking we could take a trip to IF and get some games on Saturday for International Gamers' Day (the first Saturday of June each year). (You might've read about it in KODT #79.) Fluxx, Munchkin, Tile Chess, maybe something like Settlers of Catan, etc. Anyway.


Ez2Dancer: the Korean dance machine.