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| Thursday, May 31st, 2012 | | 8:33 am |
Ebay auctions
Ugh... typing up entries for Ebay auctions isn't a quick thing... at least not if I want to put something up that reads better than "Hey, you know what this is, buy it." Anyhow, I've relisted a bunch of stuff which didn't sell previously and added more. There's still a bunch left to list which I'll get to in time. For now, look here.Also if any of this stuff strikes your fancy in isolation of the complete lot then please let me know (comment here or email) and I'll separate it out after the current auction closes. I'll also be attending Anthrocon and can deliver anything I've got for sale to people at the show, you'll just need to give me a heads up on when we'll meet and better still if you can pay in advance so I don't find myself carrying around extra things which I then have to take back home. Current Mood: busy | | Tuesday, May 29th, 2012 | | 9:35 am |
| | Friday, May 18th, 2012 | | 10:14 am |
Ooh! Tron Uprising!
The first full episode of TRON: Uprising is now online. Neat! As a big fan of TRON I'll give it an 8 out 10 as the episode hits all the marks that I want to see from the stylistic execution, the music, and the tonality of the storytelling. No real breaks were made from the movie and I appreciated that this is a story within the TRON universe that doesn't hang directly on the coat-tails of the two movies. The character design is an odd hybrid of fairly convincing 2D appearances that remind me greatly of Aeon Flux but the 3D modelling leaves something to be desired in the emotional range of acting in the poses and facial activity. I can easily live with it however. I like it! I'll be very happy to see more! Current Mood: busy | | Monday, May 7th, 2012 | | 1:27 pm |
| | Friday, May 4th, 2012 | | 9:44 am |
Starting up the ebay auctions
As part of the effort to clean house in anticipation of our home sale and move out of Virginia I've begun putting things up for auction at Ebay. If you're interested in any of this stuff (and there's a lot more to come) check it out. So far it's a whole bunch of audio cds but down the line there's going to be magazines, comics, toys, models, VHS and DVD movies, along with other sundry things. My entries are here.Tracy also has a bunch of auctions up on her account. Current Mood: busy | | Thursday, May 3rd, 2012 | | 10:03 pm |
>:(
Last week I finally purchased a 2TB portable hard drive. I needed it in order to organize the 6 years worth of files that I've had spread out between my home and work computer so that when October comes I won't have left anything behind or needlessly filled my primary hard drives up with terabytes of data that is simply duplicates or earlier iterations of files that I really want to archive. As soon as I got the drive I set about throwing all my bulky file collections on it, -primarily my audio, video, and imagery collections. As of yesterday I had done a good job of pruning out the duplicates and pared down the total collection to just over 1000 GB in size. Today I began the process of archiving my portfolio material work files. As I was doing so I started hearing this sound like a short, quiet, repetitive brush... brush... brush... Then I noticed that my file transfer was dropping to a crawl... the progress bar still said the files were transferring but the count wasn't changing. I panicked. I had some indications that my data connection on the work computer was somewhat flaky because the USB connection wasn't always happy, but the brushing sound was a strong indicator that something "broke" on the drive, and sure enough after rebooting my computer to make sure that everything was in clean shape again I could no longer get my drive to be recognized by the computer anymore. Oh, it was making an impact on the computer in the form of causing the Virtual Disk Service manager to hang, and my computer froze forever when trying to shut down, but the machine was comprehensively unable to display the data on the drive. I was freaking out at this. I knew that when I started my archival process that I was playing with fire by putting my data all in one vulnerable place but I really didn't think that the drive could fail so *quickly* and in any case I was only planning to have everything combined for a short while in order to clear space on my other home drives and make room for shuffling things around. But now... now I may just have deleted a whole mess of things I really didn't want to lose. I thank fortune that I didn't actually combine *move* all of my files onto this drive and that I do have a lot of backups, but I'm EXTREMELY upset that I lost anything at all... photos I've taken over the past year, videos, and audio collections. I'm relieved that I didn't actually lose any of my most important files (personal artwork, my entire photo archive) but there's still a lot of unknowns about just what I can't recover now, and that just puts me in the foulest mood. I've gotten in touch with the manufacture and they'll be shipping out a new drive by next week at which point I'll have to take that and the broken drive to a local computer shop and see if they can do a data recovery process on it to the tune of $45 an hour. I've got all my fingers and toes crossed and just hope to God that everything works out alright. We'll see, but I could use some positive thoughts right now. Current Mood:  angry | | Thursday, April 19th, 2012 | | 9:17 am |
| | Tuesday, April 17th, 2012 | | 10:26 am |
| | Friday, April 6th, 2012 | | 3:07 pm |
Survey of internet prices
About a month or two ago I found to my dismay that our internet service price jumped up from $60 something to now $80, while the performance has remained the same, which is to say below advertised performance. We are currently using Comcast blast service which advertises 16mbps download speeds, and yet I never observe the sort of instantaneous loading of webpages, uninterrupted viewing of Youtube, or impressively fast file download speeds which 16mbps should promise. I don't know the technical reality of what this Comcast performance ought to be, but my expectations are much higher than what I'm seeing in real-world performance. Consequently I'm extremely disappointed at the price increase which is currently $72 plus a $7 "rental" fee for our modem, which if you tally up our total "rental" charges would mean we've spent at least $252 on it. Unfortunately Comcast is really the only game in town where we live, and while we won't be here much longer I'm curious to find out what other people are paying for their internet access and what sort of speed they're seeing versus the advertised performance. And if someone out there is technically oriented enough perhaps you can tell me what are some signs that I can pinpount that we actually ARE seeing benefits of the reported 16mbps. For $10 cheaper we could go to a 6mbps download speed, and I might be inclined to do that if it turns out that the real world visible differences are negligible between that and the 16 speed we have now. Current Mood: busy | | Thursday, April 5th, 2012 | | 10:17 am |
Seen on the drive in to work
"Colorful" language has been becoming more commonplace in the past 15 years or so, but it was still a little eye opening to drive by Burger King this morning and see their sign outside adorned with the phrase "Feeling crappy? Try a Frappe!" Current Mood: busy | | Friday, March 30th, 2012 | | 2:26 pm |
| | Wednesday, March 21st, 2012 | | 1:57 pm |
Video footage found
The previous post I made linked to two news articles about the company I work for, but I discovered after the fact that the big video broadcast showing who our company employees are and what it's like to work here was no longer active. I contacted the news site and they agreed to put the video link back up (it's normally deactivated after 2 weeks). If you want to skip straight to the video you can click here: Made in Central Virginia: Video Gaming Technologies Current Mood: busy | | Tuesday, March 20th, 2012 | | 12:40 pm |
| | Friday, March 16th, 2012 | | 3:56 pm |
Public post on bad news
I've been talking privately on my journal about the news that has demolished me for the past three days. To put it succinctly: I learned yesterday that my office in Virginia will be closing on October 1st and I am one of the people who will not be extended the offer to resume my position in one of the other regional offices. This closure will affect all of the Virginia employees whose numbers I think are around 350 and covers all departments... IT, Q&A, engineering, game development, etc. I will remain employed through Oct. 1st with all my pay and benefits intact, and then will have 11 weeks severance which will end about Christmas day. I have the rest of 2012 to find a new position and learn all I can about different opportunities and to polish up whatever skills might be necessary to match the openings that are out there. There is no choice for us but to sell the house immediately and this means that we will very likely be relocating. Where we move to will depend entirely on what we can find but the expectation is that we will be much closer to a major metropolitan area and likely on or much nearer the west coast. I am absolutely devastated by this and have been struggling to maintain my composure. I had invested a lot of my hopes for the future in this company and had every reason to believe I would have a place here. I still maintain hope that there will be some opportunity in the coming months for a relocation offer to be extended. In the meantime I'm going to be trying to establish my priorities and get my emotions back under control. Current Mood:  drained | | Tuesday, March 6th, 2012 | | 4:39 pm |
"Insider Newsletter Unsubscribe"
Give me a break: "Thank you. You are unsubscribed. We appreciate your participation in our email subscription program. Please allow up to (2) weeks for your unsubscribe request to be processed." What is this? It's a binary choice, instead of a "yes" in the email subscription I've now changed it to "no". Two weeks is how long I would expect it to take if I'd mailed a letter to some P.O. Box in some backwoods locale where it was hand sifted by a person who could care less about expediency. It sure didn't take two weeks for my email to be registered (without my specific okay) on the mailing list! I had this same problem with Travelocity suddenly putting me on their newsletter (without permission). I unsubscribed but still kept getting their messages and trying to unsubscribe yet again only to see the ridiculous notice "please allow up to two weeks for processing." WHAT? Is this not the year 2012? Current Mood: busy | | Monday, March 5th, 2012 | | 10:07 am |
Well, today is now going to be very complicated
Several things are conspiring against me. I've been planning for months to take Samantha to Disneyworld this upcoming weekend and all plans were made to ensure the best time and least inconvenience. Starting about three weeks ago I did my annual maintenance work on my car (2003 Subaru Forester) and it was pointed out that I have a "small" leak in the head gasket and that it's in my best interest to get that fixed sooner or later. "You can wait if you want because the immediate problem of losing fluids can be dealt with by being vigilant about replacing them when they get low." I discovered shortly after this notice that in fact the head gasket leak had been listed as a problem on last year's annual inspection and so I lucked out in having no real problems in the meantime. But, warning heard loud and clear, and fffff...fgrubmglbe, it's going to cost $3300 to fix. Now comes the question of when to fix it... sooner? Later? Well, last Friday Tracy comes home and says that she smells burning coolant from the engine. "Really?" I answered? Burning coolant only three weeks after the car was taken into the shop is hard to believe, especially if the head gasket leak was still described as "small" after the initial notice 11 months earlier. But she's right, the coolant levels are very low after being topped off. Maybe the problem was evident last week and I just missed it completely because I was too much in the throes of my congested head cold. Tracy rightly points out that I have to take the Camry to Florida now but the first thing I have to do is get coolant back into the car. I made an appointment with my doctor today at 2:30pm to hopefully fix this problem I'm having with my left ear canal being plugged because of the head cold and afterwards I was going to swing by the auto shop to have them look in and see what's up and replace the coolant. But surprise, there's snow today! I drove in this morning at 6:50am and the snow was this powdery whispy stuff and I thought it merely curious, but there's at least four inches piling up now and folks are saying the local weather broadcasters have gotten sideswiped by how unpredictable the weather behavior has been. I don't even want to imagine what our driveway looks like right now... I'm thinking that when I eventually head home I might not even try driving up it and just parking at the bottom to be safe. Hopefully the roads will be drivable at least by 2pm so I can make my Dr. appointment... my ear really hurts. Current Mood:  perplexed | | Friday, March 2nd, 2012 | | 8:42 pm |
*groan*
Starting Sunday night I've been laid low with some sort of head cold and by God I wish it would end. It hasn't been so bad as to make me nonfunctional and I'm not sneezing or coughing like crazy, but it's really been aggravating with heavy congestion, aches and pains in my joints, and difficulty sleeping more than an hour at a time without coughing up crud. Normally I average about 6 hours of sleep per night but in the interest of trying to just "sleep it off" I've been in bed anywhere from 10 to 14 hours this week and yet I haven't really been rested... just sort of fitfully dozing. At least I've not been in a zombie state. Today brought a new level of suffering when I coughed so hard that I actually blew out my left eardrum, which may suggest an ear infection or fluid buildup so it looks like I'll have to schedule a doctor's appointment for Monday or Tuesday if this doesn't get better in the next 24 hours. I'm crossing all my fingers that this clears up soon; I'll be driving to Florida starting this coming Thursday and I do NOT want to be under the weather when that happens. Current Mood: cruddy | | Thursday, March 1st, 2012 | | 1:39 pm |
The Decorah Eagles of Iowa
About a week ago I came across an article announcing that the Decorah Eagles show was back on the air. My curiosity was piqued and so I followed the path and came across this page: http://www.ustream.tv/decoraheaglesAt first I thought "eh, it's a webcam showing a nesting pair of bald eagles", but after watching for a little while I became enamored of the proceedings. This could be the live webcam to end them all. It has everything that makes a webcam compelling: a live window into a different, unusual environment with no narration to get in the way or create repetition, a cast of two unique birds whom I've never really spent much time observing before, a focal point of interest where there's rarely any "dead air", and at times there's even a person controlling the webcam to change the view and look in different directions. I think what got me hooked was that in the first 10 minutes of watching I saw one of the birds sitting in the nest looking around, shifting position, adjusting the nest, standing up, flying off, and then the other parent fly in to replace the other parent. Sure it's low key stuff, but it's far more interesting than the usual webcams I see of things like the San Francisco Bay where you just see a post card picture and the only things of interest are how the fog changes and the color of the sky as the day progresses. I even caught a moment where one of the parents brought a kill back to the nest. Lately I've just been keeping the window open as the sounds piped in are of just ambient noise of the wind, animals, and occasional vehicles driving past. Pretty calming stuff. I've been showing this to Samantha off and on and I'm looking forward to her reaction when the chicks finally hatch. Conceptually she knows that there are baby birds inside the eggs, but she knows nothing of how long the incubation period lasts (35 days) nor what a real hatching is like (as compared to her children's books where "and *pop* out comes the baby bird!". There's three eggs in the nest with the most recent laid on February 24th, so it's expected the hatching will occur at the end of March into early April. If you look further on the page I linked above you can find all sorts of information on the birds and the project that put them on webcam including notable hilights of footage, previous eggs hatching and chicks fledged and how to tell the difference between the mother and father. Current Mood:  curious | | Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012 | | 12:39 pm |
I was driving home the other day when I saw a really nice looking 1984 Corvette stopped at a red light. While admiring it I noticed the black antique plates on the front bumper and I unconsciously blanched at the sight... antique plates are supposed to be on 1950's era cars, not something cool and desirable from my own childhood! After getting home I noticed the grey hair is creeping down into my beard. Bah. Current Mood: busy | | Monday, February 20th, 2012 | | 1:54 pm |
Dorkly is dumb
I fell for it again, only in this case my defense is I didn't see the video was a "Dorkly.com" production until after it was over. If you simply MUST know what video I saw, here's the link: ( http://www.dorkly.com/embed/22400/sonic-is-terrible-at-freeing-animals). I should have known from the start. Almost every video that I get pointed to that was created for the Dorkly site ends up being an old school videogame sprite animation that points out some irony in the story setting or takes the familiar characters into territory that is beyond the scope of the original premise or audience range (ie: the psychological underpinnings of Koopa kidnapping Mario's princess over and over). I see these and smile benignly in recognition of the "clever" idea behind it and the quality with which the piece was executed, but I never laugh and I'm rarely entertained by it. Hah ha, -Luigi has a fit about playing second fiddle to his brother Mario. Sonic the Hedgehog has a drug habit and needs his fix. It's all low-brow, scenario humor and the only clever aspect is the initial idea to stop the action and analyze how silly things are. I was imagining situations like that in my head back when these games were new (my favorite was imagining the huge piles of dead Mario bodies that would fill up the bottomless holes after numerous failed jumps) and since inevitably the Dorkly videos are based on 20 year old games I wonder how much of their audience also finds these jokes old and tired. About the only video of this type I can remember which I was entertained by is here: http://youtu.be/Q_xQ-ns5whw and that's because of the completely pure presentation of the clever twist on the subject matter. I'll be sharper eyed for avoiding the Dorkly name in the future. Current Mood: busy |
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