This weekend I think I’ll make my “project” (as if I don’t have enough stuff to do already) trying to find a suitable cooling solution for our HTPC setup without needing to have the door open. Granted, this will probably take the form of taking some pictures and asking on a message board, but that worked for my UT3 problem! As it turns out, I just needed to get newer drivers than those Asus offered as the latest from their download site, and the problem just magically disappeared.
Aside from my weekly Linear Algebra quiz, the only thing I have due next week is my OS homework on Monday. That’s seriously it which is extremely surprising when you considering everything I have due in the shortest month of the year. On the flip side, that means I actually have an ever higher density of stuff due in the remaining part of February.
Personal - Dallas
As I write this, our cable internet connection is now behaving the way it should. This means 700+ KB/s downloads, no lag playing WoW, and a general ability to just actually use the internet now! SBC informed us that they actually couldn’t provide DSL at our apartment, so in the time between learning that and waiting for the real DSL provider to hook up service, our existing connection magically started working well. I guess TWC read my post from last week and finally shot some lottery balls through their tubes because all is well now in the land of cable internet.
Between now and going to sleep, I’m going to focus on reviewing for my Ed Psych test tomorrow. It’s a 52 multiple choice test (out of which we are graded on a scale of 50), and from being at the review tonight, I don’t think it should be all that difficult. Afterwards I have a Linear Algebra quiz, but I never think those are going to be all that difficult. All in all, I have a busy school day tomorrow which only starts the domino effect for the next month.
Personal - Dallas
Over the past few weeks, I’ve occasionally had to sit in queues when I try to sign onto WoW. This is due to the maximum amount of people being logged onto the server at the same time, so you have to wait for enough people to log off before you’re allowed in. I can understand the rationale behind the decision, but it feels like Blizzard is acting like they’re running a club. Come on, Blizzard, the fire marshal isn’t going to shut you down for having to many people inside at once. Let’s beef up those servers and take care of this problem!
Even though I’m signing onto WoW right now, I did get some UT3 in earlier. One oddity though is that there’s a static/popping sound coming fromy speakers when I’m in the game, and enabling an option that fixes it also disables the slider bars so I can’t hear anything being said (SFX/music too loud, voices too low). Once I get that problem fixed, I’ll probably be playing it quite a bit more, but I waited for a few months already, I can wait a little longer.
Personal - Dallas
I started to write out my schedule on my little dry erase board, and I came to a very shocking conclusion. Between now and the end of February, I have 5 tests. Two in Ed Psych, and one in all my others except for Advanced CGD (which has no tests). In case I happened to pick up anyone else’s test(s) by mistake, I just wanted to let you know that I found them and you can come claim them. Maybe? Please??
Unreal Tournament 3 is now installing on a computer that can actually play it, so I’ll probably be involved with that tomorrow night. It’s been quite a while since I’ve played any UT (even longer than my Halo drought), so we’ll see if I still have any game left there. One strange thing that intrigues me is that Autoplay no longer seems to work on either of my computers. I have no idea the cause, but it’ll be something interesting to look into. My guess is that it’s the fault of VMWare Player, so it should just be a matter of finding the right setting to enable.
Personal - Dallas
For the first time since I believe the last Edgeworks gathering, I played Halo online today. This wasn’t the old school Halo 2 that I’m used to though; I played the still fairly new and shiny Halo 3 that I’d never even touched before, and you know what? I think I did a pretty good job for not having played that long. I ranged from anywhere between 3 and 13 kills per game with my spread being somewhere between -8 (the 3 kill game) and +4 (a 12 kill game) on the ones where I looked that up. Considering I’ve never really honed my skills (well, aside from running 4 guys in a straight line all at once), I’m very content with that showing.
I finally achieved something very important in WoW today: no new levels, but I got my leatherworking skill to 300! What, not impressed? This means that I can now skin things in Outland and actually be able to use the materials rather than just selling them to vendors. My next goal is to get my cooking and fishing skills up higher, and then once I’m done with that, I should be almost exclusively Outland.
Personal - Dallas
If you’ve never seen The Music Man, then you’re not going to understand the title one bit. Yesterday as I was leaving HP to go get lunch, I called my mom. Apparently “the pool broke” sometime between when I last noticed it working and yesterday. This breaking was in the form of something coming undone where the hose for the cleaner attaches to the side of the pool, so tomorrow (since I didn’t do it any time today) I get to play pool fixer and earn my $75 for the month.
No movie today, so I just wrote parts of my documents and played some WoW. My WoW time was fairly evenly divided between doing quests and farming leather, and I’m slowly creeping up to the point where I “should” be in my professions and other skills. Once I’m at the point where I can stay pretty much exclusively in Outland I should probably begin to level faster, but I’m in no (huge) rush to get to 70.
Personal - Dallas
One of the tasks on the agenda for our Advanced CGD group meeting was to decide on a name for our “studio” that would be making our game. We tossed around a couple ideas, got nowhere, and the someone suggested “Single Cell”. Since that implied we were a bacterium, I searched “cell” in a thesaurus. Considering it just searched through names and synonyms for the word “cell”, the results got pretty random fairly fast. Since we weren’t making progress anyway, I decided to keep scrolling though the results and we laughed at some of the results that showed up. Well, one of the places “cell” was found was in relation to an insane asylum. In that entry, someone noticed the phrase “booby hatch” — seriously. We almost went with Booby Hatch Studios as our name, but we decided that while extremely funny, it was maybe slightly inappropriate. We ended up settling on the much less controversial Watcher Studios.
I have no movie plans for tomorrow, so I’ll likely just be working on some of the stuff I need to write. The production contract for Advanced CGD and the information packet that will be sent out to companies for the game event are the first two things that come to mind, but I bet I’ll end up with something else to do before the weekend is over. Starting on my OS HW probably wouldn’t be a bad idea either (the normal HW, not the project).
Personal - Dallas
I picked up No More Heroes and Unreal Tournament 3 this afternoon as planned, but I haven’t actually played either yet. I know, not entirely shocking, but I’ve tried to play one of them. No More Heroes will be left on my shelf until I feel like it’s a good time to start it, but I installed UT3 on my computer, patched it, and then started it up. I waited, waited, wandered into the other room, waited, ate dinner, waited, and finally decided that the game wasn’t going to start. The demo didn’t work either on this computer so I can’t really say that I’m shocked the full game doesn’t.
Assuming there’s not a two day late repeat of last year, my tomorrow is extremely busy (but not in the bad, panicky kind of way). In the morning I’m going to HP to meet with Mr. Barrows, I have my Linear Algebra class at 2:30, and then at 4:00 I’m meeting with my Advanced CGD group to discuss our most probable game idea more before our first document over it is due on Tuesday. Fun, tiring, and interesting all mashed up together; now that’s what I call a productive Friday!
Personal - Dallas
David picked up Unreal Tournament 3 sometime in the past week, and seeing him play it reminded me that I had yet to buy it. So, since I have to make a trip to Gamestop tomorrow anyway, I figure I might as well get it then. The UT series is probably my favorite multiplayer FPS game (Half-Life probably being my favorite single player series, but only because Bioshock isn’t technically a series yet), and it’s been a long time since a new game in it has come out. I’ll be getting the PC version of course; games like UT just weren’t meant to be played with joysticks, triggers, and buttons.
I’m virtually done with my OS project after having worked on it for a significant portion of the afternoon. The only thing I have left to implement is that the train does not unload passengers at the first station nor load them at the last. Once I’m done with that my school work eases up considerably for the near future, or rather it’s at least more spread out so that I have more time to get it all done.
Personal - Dallas
The internet out at my apartment is atrociously slow for no reason at all. DSL was supposed to have been hooked up yesterday, and according to AT&T it was; their claim does not coincide with the blinky light on the DSL modem, however. They will be out here on Friday to attempt to remedy this issue, so until then it’s still TWC. They have to know that their tubes are clogged, so why not just shoot some lottery balls through them?
I went down to HP today, and it was decided that I will be going with the baseball team down to Austin in about a month. I didn’t go the past two years because, you know, I wasn’t on the team (and in case it needs to be clarified, I’m still not on the team), but Coach Gibbins feels like it would be of use to Michael for me to be there. I’m not really sure of Coach Rob’s motivation behind wanting me to go, but at the very least he knows I’m a hard worker and won’t cause any problems.
Personal - Dallas