Fool’s Gold wasn’t the best movie I’ve seen recently, but it was entertaining enough. I didn’t laugh as much as I expected to (since it was supposed to be a comedy, after all), but it definitely had its moments. Definitely not a DVD purchase, possibly a rental, but I’d probably tune it once it hits the movie channels. My score: 6/10.
I have HW due in Automata Monday morning then a test in OS 45 minutes later, so I got a jump start on my HW tonight rather than waiting until tomorrow to do all of it. As it turns out, it’s looking like this was a smart decision since the HW isn’t all that hard but is tedious and time consuming to do. I probably won’t finish it tonight before I go to sleep (since I like being rested and all), but hey, the less work I have to do tomorrow the better.
One day later, the networking upgrade still appears to be working fine. I picked up an 8-port switch that I for some reason thought I was going to need, but as it turns out, I don’t. Since I refrained from opening it until I figured out if I was going to need it or not, I’ll be taking it back to Best Buy tomorrow afternoon. At the same time, I’ll be picking up a new printer for my room (most likely the Canon Pixma MP470) since my current one isn’t an All-in-One and it’s been having some issues lately (but it’s also quite old, so it’s done quite well for its age).
Personal - Dallas
I picked up the networking stuff from Best Buy today after my class and spent the majority of the rest of the afternoon cursing at the network gods for making home networking such a PITA. Even though I was setting up the new router identically to the way the old one was set up, it was just not getting an IP from Verizon. Believing something was wrong with it, I took it back to Best Buy and exchanged it for another. When getting a second new one still didn’t help, I was even more confused and angry. Well, in attempting to figure out how to turn it into just an AP, I found the reason why it wasn’t working. As it turns out, Verizon was not correctly releasing and renewing our IP address, so when the new router was requesting one, Verizon was ignoring its request. As I write this now, our HTPC is connected to our Wireless-N router and is doing all of its tasks just fine. My apologies, networking gods; if you weren’t the cause of so may other problems, maybe I wouldn’t be so quick to blame you.
Of course the day of baseball that I’m not going to is going to be insanely comfortable weather, so I can only hope that it lasts for a while. Rather than the typical lunch then movie pattern, we’re doing the movie first (at 10:30) and then lunch. This actually works out better as I have an online meeting with my game group at 2:00, and if we were going to the movie second, I was going to have to be at least 20-30 minutes late getting back to my computer.
Personal - Dallas
Well, it still falls in the category of the TV placeshifting that has become super popular in our house with my dad, but he “formalized” the conversation I had with my mom about getting a Wireless-N router and adapter for the HTPC. Chances are that I’ll go ahead and buy them this weekend after doing a tiny bit more research (although I’ll likely stick with Linksys), and then the interesting situation comes up of being able to move my Xbox 360 out to the HDTV and still be able to be on Live. That obviously comes with it own set of pros and cons (such as not being able to play and watch TV out there at the same time), so that’s another thing I’ll have to debate in my mind.
Just like the last two weeks, tomorrow morning I’m off to HP to do another video capture of a physics lab. I’m not really sure what the lab is going to be, but hopefully it’s one that both works well and I am at least semi-competent at doing. The setup is extremely nice though; the camera connects directly to a computer, I record into Windows Movie Maker, and then transcode the file to a Quicktime movie for embedding inside the program used to capture the data. Dare I say that it’s even a little bit fun??
Personal - Dallas
My extra amount of sleep last night was very well received as I woke up this morning 30 minutes before my alarm was even set to go off. I used to do that all the time my freshman year (in fact, I think my alarm woke me up once that entire year), but I also went to sleep at 11:00 on a regular basis then. Even with my earlier classes this semester I’m still happy with my schedule, and I haven’t really had any mornings where I’m so tired that I don’t even want to get up and go to class.
My dad has tasked me with another money spending venture; this time, he wants me to set up a way for him to watch all of the recorded shows out on our file server on the TV in my parents’ bedroom. I basically have two options here, each with it’s own set of pros and cons. On the one hand, I can build a very small, fanless computer using a VIA chip that should have more than enough power to do the SD decoding (since none of the files are HD nor is the TV in there). On the other hand, I could mod an original Xbox, put XBMC on it, and access the files that way. The Xbox way is cheaper (even though I have one, I’d buy a used one and borrow what I needed to do the mod from a friend that has done the same thing), but the computer way gives me finer control over the features. Decisions, decisions…
Oh yeah, and while I don’t think it really needs to be pointed out given the title, this is my 700th DG post! Aside from just being a really big number divisible by 100, there’s nothing all that special about it. I guess you could say that I broke my previous record of 699 DG posts, but that just seems way too trivial.
Personal - Dallas
This morning it was extremely comfortable: sunny and in the high 60s or maybe even low 70s. By 4:00, the wind had started to pick up and it was a little bit chillier. By 7:00, every single one of us in the dugout was freezing regardless of the amount of clothing we had on. I guess it was to be expected that the first “real” scrimmage of the season would have typical baseball weather, but if only the cooler temperatures could have waited like 12 hours (or heck, even just 6!) then we all would have been much happier.
Five hours worth of coldness gave me a headache, so since I have nothing due tomorrow, I think I’m going to go take my shower and go to sleep right now. An extra hour of sleep never hurt anyone, and who knows, in that extra hour I may have the most amazing dream in which I see a vision on how to make tons and tons of money by the time I graduate next year! You don’t think so? Well, I guess I’d settle for a device that could just change the temperature outside.
Personal - Dallas
If only today could have been tomorrow, my life working the two scrimmages would have been infinitely better. We set a record high today, but of course the wonderful temperatures are going to be disappearing throughout the rest of the week with highs back down in the 60s and 50s. I guess I really shouldn’t be complaining; anything is better than 40s and insanely windy.
At the end of each semester, we’re given fill-in-the-bubble evaluations to do for each of our classes. Unless something changes drastically, I’ll probably be giving my OS class the lowest rating that I’ve done so far. Today our first homework was due, and when comparing answers with a couple of my friends before class, we discovered that we had not only different answers but different problems also. It turns out that after she assigned the homework a couple weeks ago, she proceeded to change some of the questions without telling us. Since I printed off the assignment right as it was assigned, I had about 3 questions different than a bunch of other people (even though we all did it yesterday). Seriously, if you give an assignment, it’s normally a good idea to let people know when you change it.
Personal - Dallas
Ever since the end of the regular season was near, I wanted the Patriots to lose a game. I didn’t really want them to win the Super Bowl but even moreso didn’t want them to have an undefeated season. While it would have been nice to see a Dallas-New England matchup tonight, I at least got my wish in the final outcome. I’d rather the Giants have pulled off their upset than seen Dallas get beaten again by the Patriots.
With the exception of revising my research summary due on Thursday, I finished up all my homework due for this week. That’s a scary thought, but it means I’ll have lots of free time to devote to working on other things such as my game for Advanced CGD. Next week is when things start to really start to get interesting, but by then I’ll be working on a day to day basis.
Personal - Dallas
Today at the baseball scrimmage there were mini-programs that had profiles on each of the players and coaches. A couple people had them in the dugout, so I read through it at one point in time. Later on, someone else was reading it, and when I glanced over, I noticed something on the back. At the bottom underneath the coaches’ bios, it listed the student managers and trainers (sans any kind of profile). Well, the manager was listed there along with the sophomore student trainer. To my surprise though, I was also! I have no idea if I’ll be considered a student trainer like that for the rest of the season or not, but it definitely caught me off guard.
I spent all of my WoW time today playing BGs, specifically Arathi Basin. Since I’m not a big PvP person (and therefore not on any Arena teams), BGs are the best/only way for me to get PvP gear. I’m not sure that I really need it for anything at this point in time, but stocking up on the marks and honor will eventually come in useful once I’m getting ready to gear for raiding I bet.
Personal - Dallas
I loaded up the WP Dashboard, got distracted by the links (as usual), and then started to click on the posts in my “Latest Activity” list. Through one of these I arrived at my about page. If I remember correctly, in 2006 I was extremely on top of updating that I was 20 and not 19. Well, the same can’t be said for 2007. For the past month and 11 days (maybe 12, I don’t care enough to bust out the calculator though), I’ve been deceiving people into thinking I was still 20. For that, I apologize profusely; it was never my intent to misrepresent my age. Other people seem to do that often enough for me. :)
Baseball with HP starts 3 days earlier than expected with a JV-Varsity scrimmage tomorrow at 12:00. It’ll probably remind me how extremely boring scrimmages are, but I don’t have anything pressing to do tomorrow afternoon that it’d conflict with. The high is supposed to get up to 65 tomorrow, so luckily it won’t be a freezing cold game like so many are early on in the season.
Personal - Dallas