Old
News: May 20th, 2003 to May 30th, 2003
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4:27
p.m. [GMT-8:00]
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30 May
2003 (Fri); Post #316
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GURPS
tomorrow (Saturday) at 4:00 pm for those interested. If you can't
make it there at that time, it'd be helpful to notify me. (E-mail,
cell, AIM, etc.)
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10:47
a.m. [GMT-8:00]
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30 May
2003 (Fri); Post #315
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The
first case of West Nile virus in a human in Franklin county
has been reported. Heard it through the grapevine, but the info
comes from someone at the health department.
Went to Infinite Frontiers yesterday. Got KODT #79, KODT Tales from
the Vault vol. 4, a Nodwick, a PvP, and the game Nanofictionary.
Been playing a lot of Munchkin/Star Munchkin (we mix the decks)
and Fluxx lately. Kinda want to play Lunch Money again, but my copy
got trashed. I think I'm gonna try and sell my copies of Car Wars
the Card Game and Battle Cattle on eBay. I hate those games. Goin'
to McDonald's for lunch. Today's MP3: Anne Murray - Teddy Bear Picnic.mp3
(2:44).
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11:16
a.m. [GMT-8:00]
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29 May
2003 (Thu); Post #314
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Been
studying for the 70/76-215 exam. I got an e-mail from Microsoft
today with a bunch of stuff in it, but mainly my MCP ID. I'm a Microsoft
Certified Professional now. Apparently you become one if you pass
any of the 70-/76-series tests. Anyway, I can view my transcript
and stuff.
Just got back from the clinic (printer share problems). Been practicing
Dub-I-Dub on DDR 2nd mix. My pad is starting to get really flaky...
ghost steps, difficulty triggering the sensors for Right and Back.
I need a metal pad. The Cobalt
Flux pad seems to be the best home pad out there. $300 though.
Ee.
I am an absolute riot on the Anandtech Forums. Okay, not really,
but at least I've managed to garner something other than scorn and
unprovoked hostility in a thread. See?
Today's MP3: Weird Al Yankovic - Angry White Boy Polka.mp3 (5:03).
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11:39
p.m. [GMT-8:00]
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28 May
2003 (Wed); Post #313
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Answer:
12 minutes. Stupid Charter people. Probably can't tell a router
from a sack of potatos. Or something.
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11:32
p.m. [GMT-8:00]
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28 May
2003 (Wed); Post #312
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Gah,
yet another Charter outtage. I can ping IPs of other users on Charter
(like Phillip), but can't access any other internet resources. We'll
see how long this one lasts.
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4:01
p.m. [GMT-8:00]
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28 May
2003 (Wed); Post #311
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The
following post includes 111 kB in images. Oh, how I mock those of
you on dial-up.
The road to Federal Way. This was taken at 4:30 a.m. Hanwool
and I weren't very tired at this point since we'd had about
30 oz. of extremely over-sugared coffee each. |
All of us standing in front of the Explorer at Highline community
college in Federal Way. |
The building where I had my test. The campus of this school
was really nice. Actually, the whole city seemed very clean
and pretty upper-class. |
A directory for Dana Plaza. Federal Way is kinda unusual in
that there are a lot of Korean people living there. As you
can see, nearly everything is in Han-gul. We had breakfast
at a small bakery near here. |
FANCY TOWN! YOU COME TO FANCY TOWN! BUY FANCY PRESENTS! OBEY
MY DOG! FANCY, FANCY! |
Pal-Do World. This is a grocery store that we went to with
Hanwool. He got something like $220 in groceries for his family. |
Me inside Pal-Do World surrounded by two tons of ramen and
soba noodles. |
Akasaka Japanese Restaurant (31246 Pacific Hwy South, Federal
Way, WA). Hanwool's dad is good friends with the sushi chef,
so we got a lot of free food. The sushi was the best I've
had yet ('course, I've only had it 3 times) and boy did I
have my fill. Plum sherbert for dessert. Yum. |
Anyway,
I enjoyed the trip. There was a little bit of unpleasantness when
Jones got sick on the ride home, but hopefully that was just some
motion sickness or something temporary. It was really cool seeing
various parts of Federal Way... it was like going to another country.
Korea, I suppose. Except I don't know what that's like, so I wouldn't
make such a direct analogy. But it was definitely different.
Hanwool and I were talking about making the sushi-trip a once-a-month
thing. I think that'd be cool if we went somewhere close (like,
Spokane maybe), but I don't think I'd want to make that Federal
Way trip more than once every six months. 8-10 hours of driving
seems a bit much for raw fish, you know? Then again, it was
good sushi...
Today's MP3: Weird Al Yankovic - Hardware Store.mp3 (3:44).
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8:01
p.m. [GMT-8:00]
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27 May
2003 (Tue); Post #310
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Yay,
I passed my MCSE exam (test 76/70-210). We had sushi. It was good.
I'll post more, but right now I'm very tired and generally icky-feeling
from a total of 10 hours of driving (5 of them mine). I'll have
some neat pictures later tonight or tomorrow. FTR, Jones, Beefy,
Hanwool, and I went to Federal Way today. Some people couldn't figure
this out based on previous posts. Later.
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2:47
p.m. [GMT-8:00]
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26 May
2003 (Mon); Post #309
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Okay,
going to Federal Way tomorrow. It wouldn't hurt if everybody familiarized
themselves with the route we'll be taking, just in case. Based
on the suggestions of a few people, we'll be leaving at 3:00 am.
So everyone be at my house at that time. Hanwool'll drive most of
the way up to FW so I can study. Here's a list of things
you may do on the trip up: (a) quiz H. on 70-210 questions, (b)
sit quietly, or (c) sleep. Okay, I'm kidding, but I really will
need to be cramming for the 4 hr. exam, so don't bother me or we'll
leave you on the side of the road in Toppenish.
If you need to back out or suddenly have a schedule conflict or
something, call my cell so we don't wind up waiting for you. I understand
the morning rush hour is pretty bad. Yadda, yadda, lunch at the
sushi place, maybe hit an arcade, then back to Pasco. Whee.
BTW, did you know you can save $20-30 on toner cartridges for HP
laser printers if you buy the Staples brand instead of HP's? And
they seem to be just as good. We'll see how many pages it lasts
though; my HP cart went 3,700 before getting flaky beyond reasonable
use.
Slee-ee-ee-eep.
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6:06
p.m. [GMT-8:00]
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23 May
2003 (Fri); Post #308
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Set
up the wireless networking at my parents' house. It was amazingly
simple. Just plugged the router in, then went over to my sister's
system and plugged the USB wifi adapter in (just one cable, doesn't
even need external power). Installed the drivers, then a little
icon popped up in her system tray; double-click, says there's a
new network to connect to, click "Connect." Bam! Full
internet access. Gets really good signal, even though there's about
50 feet and three walls between her machine and the router. I didn't
set up WEP or anything, but war-driving is hardly a problem in west
Pasco. I'll take my chances.
It seems like it's actually summer now. I had to turn on the air
conditioners earlier today. It's actually 86° F outside! Tomorrow's
supposed to be in the low 90s! Wow. Just seems so sudden. Anyway,
I picked up two 12-packs of soda at the Shell station: Coke and
Vanilla Coke. Ran into Matt. It was awkward. Apparently, he's marrying
some woman named Teresa sometime this month or next (I wasn't really
paying attention). Ugh.
Because I bought the wifi stuff through the AHOP acct., the checkout
girl (Angela) at Circuit City started telling me how much she likes
Dr. Oliver. We had a short conversation. She seemed pretty up on
her networking jargon. She couldn't believe my dad's kids were in
college (guess she didn't realize he was that old).
Anyway. Invisible Monsters is pretty good. Seems even better
than Survivor. I'm beginning to think Palahniuk's gimmicks
are getting a skoche tiresome. "Give me anger. Flash. Give
me intense regret with overtones of frustration. Flash. Give me
a reader who thought this device was cute until chapter 17. Flash."
Still, it's a great book. Oh yeah, there's an awesome deal on
10/100 ethernet USB adapters here.
Only $2.99 each! I bought 4. With shipping, it was only like twenty
bucks. And they're so useful. Well, anyway. Today's MP3: Video Girl
Ai - Happy Tears (Opening).mp3 (5:42).
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2:15
p.m. [GMT-8:00]
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23 May
2003 (Fri); Post #307
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Just
scored 50,480,100 on If You Were Here. 212 max combo, 162
perfs, 50 greats. Felt it warranted a post. Well, I'm off to buy
wireless stuff at Circuit City. Ciao.
50 million points on If You Were Here, DDR 4th Mix. Bow before your
king!
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2:12
a.m. [GMT-8:00]
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22 May
2003 (Thu); Post #306
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I finished
Survivor last night. It was good. Slightly better than Choke,
I think. I bought Invisible Monsters (another Palahniuk novel)
at Hastings today with Jones and Beefy. Before that, we all had
lunch at the China Cafe. Before that, Drew and JD came over
(Drew brought ice for snow-cones). Drew and I DDRed a little, JD
borrowed my GURPS Cyberpunk.
I've been posting in the AnandTech
forums. There was this thread where ppl were showing the innards
of their machines, so I contributed this
page (details on my main system). Also been active in the forums
on Beefy's site (SuperSoda.com).
He and "dGon" are having an amusing little tiff that's
so far involved threats to call the police and a lot of wang-loving
comments.
At the China Cafe, Ryan and I had the General Tsao's Chicken (Beefy
had the Almond Chicken). Good stuff. Still studying for the 76-210
MCSE test. OMG, it is some boring stuff (RIPrep, permissions, PXE
compliance, etc. — yawn). If you're studying for this
test, here're some good PDFs you can find on Kazaa or GNUtella or
whatever:
70-210
MCSE Windows 2000 Professional Study Guide 2nd ed Sybex.pdf
TestKing - MCSE 70-210 Q&A with Explanations v1.2.pdf
Troytec MCSE Windows 2000 70-210 (FULL ACCESS).pdf
Today's
MP3: Millincolin - Mr. Clean.mp3 (2:39).
Jones and Beefy "sparring" ... or something. 5/21/03,
on the north side of the house.
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3:53
p.m. [GMT-8:00]
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20 May
2003 (Tue); Post #305
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I remember
what I was going to post yesterday that I forgot: I scored 38 million
on Dam Dariram (191 max combo, IIRC). Drew saw the whole thing.
Last night I started reading Palahniuk's Survivor. It's really
interesting. A little better than Choke, but neither of those
came anywhere near being as good as Lullaby was. I'm more
than halfway through. It's kinda neat; the pages in the book are
numbered backwards (you start at 300-something and work towards
page 1).
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1:24
a.m. [GMT-8:00]
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20 May
2003 (Tue); Post #304
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Oh,
man, sometimes I wish I was reckless enough to trash people
I know on my blog... cuz I have some words for certain
people. Anyway. I guess I can make general comments though.
I hate it when people talk about how "in love" they
are with their SO on their blogs. And, for some reason, the
SOs always have these disgustingly popular, cutesy names that
invariably end in "i." Here's a sample of the kind
of crap I have to wade through daily:
You
know how it is when your so liek completely in love with another
human been? me & sandi were up too like 5 am just talkgni.
we understand each other so much its like our brains are the same
and oh i'm just so in love with her i want to have babies oh and
shes so hot i love her love love lvoe love luv luv luv whee the
world is so bright and happi cuz im in love...
The
spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors are intentional. That's
really how this drivel looks. Of course, this goes on for like 3
posts. Then you don't hear about "sandi" for a couple
days and the next post is just "we broke up for mutual resons."
Next week the idiot has another airheaded bimbo to play with.
Okay, anyway. Hanwool and I just went to Go Bowl in Pasco. Ohhh-hhh
boy, do I have some things to say about them. First, these
drittseks tell us we have to pay a four dollar cover charge just
for the luxury of being in their crappy little den of human scum.
Oh, and they tell us this after we've been there for a while,
so it's not like we had a choice. So we DDR (5th mix) for a while,
then go to get more money at the bank (seeing as how we were each
robbed of $4). We get some cokes at McDonald's and come back to
DDR some more. These fascist drink-Nazis (well, just this one mega-jerk,
actually), stop us and say we can't have outside drinks in there.
Morrapulers.
[Incidentally, you might notice I don't use English swear words
here. I try to keep it PG (maybe PG-13). Instead, I use Norwegian
curses.]
Been studying for my MCSE tests a lot. Downloaded a bunch of 70-210
study guides and sample tests. Of course, I'm actually taking tests
76-210 and 76-215, but they're essentially the same.
I got in on this odd promotion/beta-test Microsoft was offering
(it was surprisingly hush-hush); got both tests for free (normally,
MCSE exams are $125 each), so I saved myself $250. Of course, they're
not offered at the local testing center, so I'm going to Federal
Way and Moses Lake.
Had the GURPS game on Saturday. Seemed to go okay. Drew and Phill
were absent. Justin will probably be absent for this week's game
(some racing thing), but I'm not entirely sure what we're playing
anyway (HDHC, Upsidaisium, or Theomundi). Jones brought some very
good banana bread his mom made. We all had Mochi (this strange Japanese
dessert of mango ice-cream covered in rice-dough). My grandma sent
me a snow-cone maker. It works; the results are pretty delicious.
I like snow-cones. I need to get a bottle of Tiger's Blood flavor
syrup.
Umm... what else? I have to buy a bunch of wireless networking gear.
I've never worked with unusual antenna setups, so if anyone knows
a good resource for that (equipment reviews, how-to's), plz toss
me an e-mail. I need to set up an omni and at least one (probably
two) directionals.
Still playing SMAC a lot. Probably too much. Something went wrong
on the last game though; Deirdre actually started kicking my ass.
Then I made a pact with Miriam, but she started pulling this crazy
dritt where she kept building bases inside my territory. The only
up side was that we have pretty good relations, so I was able to
buy them off her for a couple hundred energy credits each. Mind
worms are so hard to kill on Talent level.
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"Don't
be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an
experiment. The more experiments you make the better." —
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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