my mental sieve...
|
|
| Evil Wayne my mental sieve... |
|
|
Wednesday, September 29, 2004 TiVo Redux I had two big goals for the weekend. 1. Fix TiVo 2. Start Sorting the Lego On Friday, I downloaded the MFS tools for fixing TiVo. It's a Linux boot for the PC so you can use the tools and backup the TiVo harddrive. TiVo actually still works. I plugged it back in on Saturday and everything seems fine. We even watched an episode of the Twilight Zone it had recorded back in August right before she went all squirrely. I let TiVo go through its setup process because it's been so damn long since it was connect. Is it me or does that sound dirty in some way? The plan now was to backup the unit onto the new hard drive, but put the old drive back into TiVo and let it fail on it's own. Sort of like the AE35 Unit on Discovery I (you're a real dork if you got that). Because it could be a week or a month or whole other year before it goes belly-up and we might as well get the most out of it. I updated the software (and that took an hour or so) and then proceeded to disassemble the unit. From there, I had to hook it up to the old PC to run the tools. But here's where it's gets funky. The back appears to start okay, and then if flunks out. Because I'm running a Linux boot, I have to reboot the PC every time I want to see Windows and what it's done. I do this about 10 times. I'm not really familiar with Linux commands, although they do look a little like DOS commands. In fact, over this whole freakin' ordeal, I figured them out by osmosis... So I finally get to the point where it's just not working. It keeps flunking out for whatever reason. Gets to about 25 of the 775 MBs and stops. And confusingly, its says Backup failed... [code]: Success! Nice. Rebooting Windows and I've got a 500 MB swap file just whoring up all the space. This appears to be Problem Number 2: The Windows hard drive on that computer is the smallest drive I own. 2 GB. In my infinite wisdom so many moons ago, I decided that Windows could have a whole HD to itself, and, thus, chose the smaller unit. I have always regretted that decision, and here it is biting me in the ass once again. This is the old PC, which is mostly a collection of cast off parts from over the years. I'm using it for a number of reasons. First, if something catches fire, it won't be my newer system. Second, it's running Win98 and thus has FAT32 partitions. WinXP runs NTFS - something I'll admit I didn't know until this ordeal, but the MFS tools need FAT32 to work or something like that. Anyone buying this? I figure that the swap file is now taking too much space. I start worrying about having to reinstall Windows on one of the larger drives. I uninstall everything I can on the drive. I even defrag it (which takes about 4 hours) and then I try it again. Nope. Fucker won't go... Then I give up. But it bounces around my head the next couple of days. I surf the TiVo community boards and try to get an answer to my problem. Sigh. It also occurs to me that I've been booting a Linux install. I'm not sure why it would need Windows in there... Yes, I am a freakin' idiot. Today I've had enough. I surf around and hit upon a command I didn't try. Well, I got nothing to lose at this point, so I rewire the whole thing, but I use one of the larger drives as the C drive. Bingo, the whole thing starts backing up. Then, just to save myself some grief, I restore it onto the new drive. Now it should be ready to go if-and-when TiVo finally gives up the ghost. I reassemble the unit and plug it in. At this point it's about 10 mins to 8 o'clock. I thinking that if it works, I can TiVo Lost and not worry about taping it. TiVo powers up and then comes on, but you have to hit the TiVo button on the remote. One thing about TiVo, there are no buttons on the face. Nothing. It's all operated by a remote that's like $30 to replace. So I turn to where I think I've left it and... it's gone. Mutherfucker! I tear up the downstairs and there's still no bloody remote. WTF?!? I come all this way to be stopped by a stupid misplace?!? I go upstairs - I rummage around the kitchen, the bathroom - it's nuts to have come this far and be stopped by this stupid freakin' thing. GAH! I give up on TiVo-ing Lost and fall back on taping it. At this point if I find the remote I could really screw it up and I really need to see the next episode. So while it's taping and the TV is off (because The Boy doesn't allow you to watch TV... that's a whole other story), I take one more look around. I pull the couch out, I rummage through some of the bins in case it fell in when I wasn't looking. We're more and more suspecting that maybe The Boy has thrown it away. He's been very eager to chuck things whenever we're not really paying attention. I give up. It's gone. I surf over to bestbuy.com and see if you can buy them in the store. Fuck. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I get on the floor and look under the couch again, you know, because it may have magically appeared. But no. So as I sit there I look under the TV again. We've got a Rubbermaid bin with most of the DVDs there. It just fits under the TV on the shelf. Tine says something about checking there. I say I had and look again. Nope, don't see it. But then I reach under to be sure. Or maybe to get sucked under by the little troll that lives under there. But instead my hand closes around a remote. The Remote! Fuck yeah. So it's all working now. For how long, I haven't a clue, but at least there's a backup plan for when it does fail. In case you were wondering, I never got to #2 on my list. Fuck. posted by Evil Wayne | 11:03 PM 0 comments Tuesday, September 28, 2004 Amusing Drunk Muppet Bad Candy posted by Evil Wayne | 10:53 PM 0 comments Sunday, September 26, 2004 Yet Another Test I'm not sure why I keep feeling the need to take these dumbass things whenever I stumble across them on the internet, but I do. This time I've gotten a result that is much more puzzeling. I can't say I would ever have seen this one coming. posted by Evil Wayne | 1:54 AM 0 comments Friday, September 24, 2004 Doom3 I downloaded the Doom3 Demo last night and played through part of the first level. Through the entire thing I kept thinking how much it reminded me of Half-Life. Even down to the interaction with other characters. You click on them and hear their response to your unasked question. But it looks fan-fucking-tastic. I ramped the detail up to insane and it was chugging. Even two notches down looked pretty darn good. For example. Across a platform on the far side was a computer terminal. From where I was, the screen was a blur. As I walked up to it, it slowly resolved to clarity. I could actually read it. Not only that, I could interact with it, without the game loading a new screen! It was like I was there. The whole game is like that. Everything you see is fuzzy because it's far away. Get close enough and details resolve and interactive is plain. There was some sluggishness between "zones" I'm guessing. In the same way Half Life was one gigantic level as you walk thru doors, the game is probably preloading sections. Could be smoother, but it's probably that my machine is almost 2 years old now. I wander down through to my first assignment. Go find a scientist in the old comm station. The lights get dimmer. Flickery. You get to go outside for a moment and that's cool. Back inside it's dark and creepy, but I'm waiting for it to scare me. I'm expecting it, so I'm already disappointed. How is it going to spook me, when I know it's coming? Well, I won't blow it, but when all hell breaks loose, I get jumpy. Much more than I would have expected. People die. You have a radio and it first starts chirping out commands from your unit. Descriptions of what's going on. Then it slowly becomes a steady torrent of screams and hellishness. Then things come out of the woodwork. I got jumped from behind the first time. Had no idea what was going on, I heard something zombieish, but didn't understand until I got spun around and saw "it"... At least once, while running away blindly into the elevator, there was a rumble and the doors opened as the lights went out, I just started shooting wildly because I though they were on me again. Not to mention that you can't hold the flashlight and a weapon. So you can put down your gun and see what the trouble is if you like. You're just likley to see something about to eat your face off. Holy shit did it spooked me. I'm not even that far along either. I must own this game. posted by Evil Wayne | 4:04 PM 0 comments Foiled Again Pesky Mind-Control Lasers bothering you? Government reading your personal thoughts? Aliens tracking you by your constant thinking of the number 3? This could be for you. posted by Evil Wayne | 9:25 AM 0 comments Thursday, September 23, 2004 Our next topic will be "How does Spongebob Squarepants keep his grill lit underwater". Do we really have a problem with the engine running? We watched ABC's Lost tonight. I have to say that it hooked me. I really didn't know that much about it beforehand beyond that it was a plane crash on an island. In fact that was pretty much the sole reason I tuned in last night. To see that damned plane crash. But we don't see the plane crash. Damnit. I assumed it would start on the aircraft, but it didn't and I have to say that I liked that. It starts with Matthew Fox on the ground already, apparently having been thrown from the crash and then he runs and it all gets dizzy as you realize it's already happened. There's a wild sense of confusion with that and I imagine it's what you would think if you had survived such a crash. What the fuck just happened? It looks like they'll show us the crash in flashbacks. We got part of it, but not the whole thing. Looks amazingly scary. Of course, we don't get the whole thing because ABC in it's wisdom decided the pilot episode should decidedly not be a 2 hour event. Nope. We need the 9-11 slot for The Bachelor! Seriously, what is wrong with network executives? Right, they're biomechanical superdroids from the future come back in time to make my life as inconvenient as possible. Yeah, they got an agenda. It's not vicious or anything, it's just annoying. Because in the future, they're bored. Anyway, after the plane crash I was pleasantly surprise to see there is "something" on the island with them. Whatever it is, it appear to be very big. Trees get toppled, there's spooky roaring in the distance. Yet no footprints. Or is that an effect of television? The worst thing about TV is you can never be sure at the outset of Did They Mean It? Or Did someone fuck-up? I love supernatural garbage like that. Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis, Lemur... Remember In Search Of...? That was my favorite show as a kid. So this, as it appears now, plays right to that little kid in me. I can't stop obsessing over what it could be (for the love of God, please don't be the dog). So after the show I start surfing the boards and there a few people there slamming it even before it started (time-stamp, everyone). Okay, what's that about anyway? You got nothing better to do than surf every board and post the same drivel everywhere? Dude, get a hobby. But one of the odder threads was about the engine still running. It really went on and on back and forth about why it could or could not be. It really got ridiculous. One guy even claimed to be a mechanic or an engineer and went into great details about why it wouldn't be working. Seriously, who needs a life? Okay, apparently me. posted by Evil Wayne | 1:30 PM 0 comments Monday, September 20, 2004 Freaky Okay, this is really odd. I worked on this game and the manual, but I only set the manual in Quark (and added a little flavah text for some of the chapters). But I certainly didn't write it. I should find the copy I have to see where my name appears in the credits. I know that whoever was in charge at the time decreed that your name couldn't appear under two headings (or some dickhead motion like that). So I chose documentation or layout or something over being listed under QA because I knew it would be more valuable over time to have done a book layout than played the game for endless hours looking for bugs. I had some of the LOM pages in my portfolio when I got my current job and they're still in there. I was actually pretty proud of the work I did on that. It's still one of the more creative projects I've done. But to be listed as the author, well, that's just freaky. posted by Evil Wayne | 10:57 PM 0 comments I'll Get to a Real Post Soon Okay, I know I blew all last week. I'm not even exactly sure why I didn't end up with some time to write, but it happens. Hey, at least 3 months haven't gone by. I think part of it is this guilt I have about not working on the Halloween game when I really need to start cracking down. I have two short films (glorified slideshows, really) that I committed to do and they need to be done before the game, like weeks before and I haven't really started either one. And lookie here, I've blown yet another lunchhour without writing a damned work for it. I'm really screwed and that sets off a vicious circle... posted by Evil Wayne | 1:53 PM Wednesday, September 15, 2004 IGpay Atinlay The Bible in Pig Latin A Pig Latin Translator Google's Pig Latin Page posted by Evil Wayne | 9:13 PM 0 comments Friday, September 10, 2004 What I Learned Friday This is what I learned this week: 01. I learned that The Boy(TM) will ask before getting into my Lego collection, regardless of my answer. 02. Once he finds a minifig he won't stop bothering me until I've given said minifig a hat of some kind. 03. He is not fooled by simply putting a block or a radar dish on the minfig. 04. Peeron is great for letting me know I have used up all of one type of part and need search no longer. 05. No matter how many parts I have, Bricklink will always get more of my money to supplement my collection. 06. Leaving a teabag in the mug while taking a big swig cause the tea to rush around the teabag and down my cheeks and over my shirt at work. 07. Washing out tea out of my shirt creates a bigger "wet-tee-shirt" effect again, at work. 08. I learned that if I don't keep track of my workload, I cannot refute claims that I have wasted time on projects. 09. Drawing a primal yell from deep within myself is a very satisfying release for angry before arriving home. 10. Making sure the road is clear before giving said yell is more preferable than receiving horrified looks from people walking their dogs as I drive by. 11. Beer also helps. 12. I need to learn more HMTL. I can't get this bloody list to work right. 13. When ordering schools supplies sooner is better than having an 11-year old angry at me. 14. The children do not like to talk about school. 15. Interpreting shrugs and contorted faces is considered communications by teen and pre-teens. 16. The Boy(TM) likes to chew chocolate chip cookies and then spit them out. 17. A spit cookie sometimes looks like cat crap on the carpet. 18. Yelling at The Boy(TM) produces laughter. 19. Going back to work on Fridays after having them off for the last 13 weeks, sort of sucks. 20. This site was great inspiration for this post. posted by Evil Wayne | 1:31 PM 0 comments Thursday, September 09, 2004 The 100th Post  Yeah, I'm all about the retarded milestones. It has taken me, let's see... three plus two.. carry the one... a whole freakin' year-and-a-half to reach 100 posts. Not exactly a triumph of wordsmithery, or regularity for that matter. So, on this fine occasion, I couldn't really figure out what to write that might be meaningful. I still can't. So I'll fall back on this stand-by entry I was saving for such an event. Oddly, it seems like this is the actual event I should be saving it for (well, it'd be nicer if this was my 500th or 1000th post–which at this rate should be ... one, point five plus... five-hundred posts... carry the three... oh, only 7 years)... Anyway, for this milestone, let us delve into some of the finer, useless trivia point of evilwayne.com. Most of the following information is gleaned from the site counter I've been using via SiteMeter.com. It's public info (more or less) and it's almost spooky what's recorded sometimes. Visitor Info (as of 09.09.04) Total 783 Average Per Day 3 Average Visit Length 3:02 This Week 20 Page Views (as of 09.09.04) Total 1,641 Average Per Day 4 Average Per Visit 1.3 This Week 25 As you can see, we're doing a rip-roaring business here. Not that I care too much. I started this blog for me and never really asked anyone to come (and that appear to be working... :P). Time Zones The sight counter records some goofy information and one of them is the time stamp/zone of the visiting PC. Now, I know this can easily be spoofed so I don't put too much stock in it, but here are some of the more odd time zones records of visitors to this site: UTC+1:00 CET - Central European Time UTC+2:00 EET - Eastern Europe Time Russian Federation Zone 1 UTC+7:00 WAST - West Australian Standard Time UTC+8:00 CCT - China Coast Time Russian Federation Zone 7 UTC+0:00 UTC - Universal Time Coordinated GMT - Greenwich Mean Time WET - Western European UTC-1:00 WAT - West Africa Time UTC-9:00 YST - Yukon Standard Time AKST - Alaska Standard Time AKDT - Alaska Standard Daylight Saving Time Man, who knew there was a Yukon Standard Time?!? I sometimes wonder why people actually come here. According to the counter utility they don't appear to stay too long, but I'm not sure how accurate it really is. Graphical Stats Here's a few pie charts representing various other cataloged items by the site meter. Unfortunately, I'm not sure whether this is measured within a month, or the whole life of the counter (it's probably the latter).    
Comments There have never been any visitor-related comments. I'm not 100% sure if the system even works. I think that it does not. I've had problems with adding comments to post since day one. Originally I was using an external comments program, blogspeak, but even that didn't integrate very well with my template. When Blogger added their own comments system, I tried that. It was a simple click-button that added code to the template. The problem appears to be my template. It's a bit older, from when I was first on Blogger a couple of years ago. The code did not mesh well, in fact, it seems to have written in a redirect for my site a few weeks ago. So I'm going to remove the code and not worry about whether anyone has anything to actually say or not. Email me if you have a rant or something, it's about the only way I'll ever see it at this point. Blogger's Stats (as of 09.09.04) On Blogger Since March 2003 Recent Posts 9 Avg Posts Per Week 1 Posts Written 99 Words Written 23,967 Outbound Links 117 Profile Views 0 Why I Originally Started This I started this blog to have some place to write. I'm terrible with journals, but I do always seem to find myself in front of the computer. So, writing a little bit here and there was my goal. I was actually hoping that it would somehow kick start my writing overall. So far, it isn't working that well. Paying for a website has made me much more conscious of it though. I do try to put something down weekly and I keep thinking that each entry will be long and slightly narrative in some way. That's not working as well as I'd like. I find that while I constantly think about what to write here, I don't have the actual time to put it down and get it up here. For example, after the 4th of July, I wanted to post this rant about how I had a really good time because nobody was in Maine for the weekend. But I knew it was a long entry, and I kept putting it off. So finally it got to be mid-August and I just about gave up on the idea. I could never seem to sit down long enough to blurt it out. And then there's a chronology of the thing that it starts to seem grossly out of place the further away it gets. I have cheated. I have written some things out of sequence and used the Change Time & Date function to insert them in the correct order. Which is what the damn thing is for, but I always feel guilty about it. What's Next (Relatively Speaking...) Parts of the sight are going in for an overhaul in the coming months. My Big Idea (tm) is to first divest the Media pages back to puncducs.com where it really belongs. I'll probably also move the Draw pages with it, not that there's ever really been much of anything to start with there. evilwayne.com will then just be words. Maybe some pics, but mostly just words. Okay, there will be Lego too. With the recent reanimation of my collection, I'm actually getting to use it somewhat (well, any use at all is a big improvement over the Nothing it was getting used before). As a result, I hope to have some models built now and then, posting pics and some animations I have planned (which will probably be host via puncducs.com. Plus I'll have all kinds of BrikWars info up there as well. So the bricks pages will stay, but will probably go through some kind of transmogrophication. Come to think of it, I'll probably keep the Contest pages as well. I would love to have another ridiculous contest soon. Maybe something related to Halloween or Christmas. All of this will probably take me awhile. I can't image it'll be completed anytime soon. I'm ridiculously slow with this whole thing, so while I want a big overhaul, I'm probably going to have to settle for the tiny, incremental changes that nobody will really notice until something is missing and I'll get rude emails. Probably from Steve. posted by Evil Wayne | 1:30 PM 0 comments Wednesday, September 08, 2004 Pushing to the Top Okay, I'm closing in on 100 posts. I should probably think of something interesting to write... Okay, this post is nothing more than to drive my count up to close the gap. It's my blog, I can do whatever the hell I feel like. Fuck off. posted by Evil Wayne | 1:03 PM 0 comments Tuesday, September 07, 2004 Last Week So last week went by–it seemed to go a lot slower than I remembered–and now I'm back to work again. It was groovy getting out of work at 2:30 for three days and then taking Thursday and Friday off. Coupled with the Labor Day holiday, I got the longest vacation I've taken since last Christmas. Even then, I only took the day after off, giving myself four days. Damn, when the hell was the last time I had off like this? I can't remember. I didn't even take that much time when The Boy was born (not that that would have been a vacation, mind you). Starting on Wednesday I was getting calls from Christine (who got sick earlier and suffered through her vacation. She's even taking today off as her last day, giving her a grand total of 10 days in a row without work. Damn, what is wrong with me?!?)... Anyway, she started calling me to give me updates on Hurricane Frances. As the week worn on, it was becoming apparent that there might be a real chance they would not be coming home on Saturday. Project paths put the storm crossing right over Tampa and at least on Thursday, they couldn't nail it down, but it might hit the area around 12 to 2. The flight was scheduled to leave at 11. Friday wasn't much better, but at least it was looking like Frances was taking it's sweet ass time getting there. Brigette and Frank drove them to the airport in the early morning of Saturday and then hightailed it out of there, Tine called and told me. She then settled in for a three-hour wait. Later she told me there were lots of people on stand-by hoping to get the hell out ahead of Frances. Some of them were angry. That can't have been fun. But they did make it out. They closed Tampa a few hours afterwards. She said the flight was turbulence-filled. When I met them at the airport there was 4.7 minutes of Happy-To-See you, followed by 20 mins of waiting for the luggage that slowly began to work on everyone's nerves. Things went downhill from there. It's hard to shake the tension from that kind of wait and flight. It's not something I realized right away, either. The drive home aggravated things, because there was quite a bit of traffic. Tine just got more and more tense to the point she was nauseous. I think it took her over 24 hours to decompress. She seemed a lot better on Monday morning. Happy to be home, finally. It's sort of a mixed bag with everyone being home again. I don't have to worry about Finn as much. I don't have to wait until he's asleep to take a shower or watch the news. But I also can't dump a giant tub of Lego onto the floor in the middle of the living room. It's also much harder to keep things clean with three other people mucking up the works. But I can check my email without him hounding me, or putting on Dora the Explorer for the 86th time. I keep getting that stupid theme song stuck in my head... Leebone and Kim came by on Sunday to have me try on the wedding outfit. They're having a Renaissance wedding, full costumes and everything. Oh boy. No pics yet, but there will be next month after the wedding. I know you're dying to see those. :) For now I should turn my attention toward the BrikWars game in late October. I have done squat for it, and I'm starting to feel guilty. Real guilt too, not that fake guilt sometimes you say you have. I need to create a few short videos that introduce that game and some tanget material. I figure I have six weeks. Which means I'll only have one done by game time... posted by Evil Wayne | 3:55 PM 0 comments Monday, September 06, 2004 Praying For Peace What the hell is this crap? Ooh, look Dubya praying for the nation while Abe and George stand on like Yoda and Obi Wan. "Use the Force Dubya. No the other force, you dolt." I think I'm going to puke. In fact, you should watch this geekfest just to wash off that sinking sickly feeling you'll get. posted by Evil Wayne | 5:35 PM 0 comments Wednesday, September 01, 2004 I don't know what to say...  Well, they *are* quite the sexy ladies!
posted by Evil Wayne | 6:04 PM 0 comments |
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
