Gamies, Cache #1 and Working on a Sunday. :(

Played an immense game of Arkham Horror again yesterday with Korny, Cainbits, Minx, Salay, and both the salient Bennetts. This time we failed dismally and were consumed by Yig. Oh well, that’s Cthulhu mythos I guess. confused
Today went caching with E and found this oneexternal link. The GPS was useless at first but E retrieved it by the simple expedient of taking out the battery and putting it back.
Now I’m At Work again. Grmph. frown I get Tuesday off in lieu, but on a beautiful Sunday afternoon this doesn’t seem like any kind of compensation.

The other RMS, the passage of time… becoming my own father

Today I took a day off and once again attended the Royal Melbourne Showexternal link with E. We had a most excellent time, and were fortunate enough to witness a good half-hour of the domestic-dog-trials, and even to get some video. (spaniel border collie apologies for the odd format and low res)
After the show, E took me to a familial duty long overdue: a trip to visit my grandmother in her nursing home. It was pretty scary for me: she has always been fiercely independent, and sufficiently cunning and devious that there was always some clear yardstick by which I could tell that she was still basically all there, however her body might have been falling apart. The deterioration has been sudden however… I don’t think she knew who I was, and in the course of fifteen minutes conversation she explicitly gave the current date as three distinct (and different) times, all before my birth. She recognised E though, as that lovely girl from Ballarat. At one point I think she mistook me for my father, which was weird.
The whole event left me feeling sad and horrified for her, but also chilled with a sense of my own mortality. The knowledge that one day all that I am now will fade and be utterly erased throws the significance of the time I have into sharp relief.

GPS joy, traps for the unwary, I uz da winnah an’ da champeen!

My happy shiny GPS arrived!
To recap, it is an i-Trek WondeProud BT-77 based on the nemerixexternal link chip.
It is a tiny black box about the size of a matchbox. It weighs very little. It charges in about an hour, and runs on one charge for at least 18 hours, as advertised. It came with a USB charger cable and a lighter-socket-to-USB adaptor. Nifty! It appears to work absolutely flawlessly with my Tungsten T2, using GeoNicheexternal link, which I have yet to register.
There turns out to be a slight trick though: The GPS will run, as I said, for 18 hours on a charge, and has no “auto-power-save” mechanism. GeoNicheexternal link, while connected to the GPS, suspends the Palm pilot’s normal power-saving mechanism. The Palm, as many readers are doubtless already aware, does not run at full-bore for 18 hours on a single charge. Not by a long shot.
This morning I caught the Palm right on the verge of going completely flat and dumping its contents. Another time I might not be so lucky. Need to remember to turn it off…
Finally, in a complete random bloop of titanic proportions: Wednesday morning saw me going to a seminar entitled “Why do I need a SAN?”, which turned out to be a not-veiled-at-all IBM sales schpiel for their latest RAID boxes. Ho-hum. But at the conclusion of this ‘seminar’, there was a business-card raffle for a $250 dinner at Donovan’sexternal link. And I won. That never happens…biggrin

Circular Saw!

Many things have happened this weekend, I’m sure, but I am having real trouble remembering any details at all. This should probably disturb me more than it does.

Oh well, none of that matters, because this morning I bought a circular saw! Wheee!

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That is all… SCREEEEEEE

Some semi-philosophical thoughts, various goals achieved.

If, as happens at University, beginning together does not necessitate ending together, to which are we more joined? Those with whom we end, or those with whom we begin?

Also…

I have come to the conclusion, after a couple of years of daily close analysis of the subject here:
image
…that ordinary (non-sports) cars accelerate on a curve which begins at a lower poin than the acceleration curve of the leaping human body. That is to say: a human and a car starting their acceleration from the same point, at the same instant, the human will outdistance the car, if only for the briefest fraction of an instant. This difference is inherent in the fact that a comfortable domestic car will only accelerate at a certain maximum on intitial clutch-traction, simply for the comfort of the passengers, whereas a startled human being can leap considerably beyond their own threshhold of comfort in extremis.
I have also concluded that the duration of this fraction of an instant is about the same as, or slightly longer than, the human reaction-delay; the two-hundred milliseconds or so which elapse between the detection of a threat and the most basic and reflexive of reactions to it.
This, I would assert, saves lives. This factor means that when I stand a few feet behind a car which has overrun the line at an intersection, and the driver of said car reverses suddenly to avoid the cross-traffic, I will usually outpace the car for exactly long enough for the driver to realise his mistake and apply the brakes, missing me by millimetres.
It is also a factor which __does not apply_ to many serious sports cars. As I have experienced in my brother’s (currently non-functional) RX7, sports cars can also accelerate at rates that substantially exceed human comfort. This implies that they can probably outpace a human being from a standing start over very short intervals of time indeed.
Not, I might add, that I have anything against sports cars. I don’t think anyone is under the illusion that they are entirely safe. cool
In other semi-news: I have finally lashed out and bought the aforementioned GPS. Now it only remains to see if the damn thing works. confused
And, lastly, I am proud to announce that I have FINISHED the User Registration / Modification script. You can now register yourself as a new Trouble user here and modify your user account here! smile

I want…

I want a big red mushroom-switch on my desk which I can bash, and maybe a big heavy rubber mallet to bash it with. When pressed, the switch sets my voicemail message to “FUCK OFF” and redirects all incoming calls directly to it, deactivates my voicemail light so that I can’t even see if I have messages, lowers an opaque cone-of-silence over my desk, lights up a big neon sign over my head which says the same thing, and runs kill -9 on any instances of Thunderbird or Gaim I might be running. Maybe it could erect a ten-foot-high electrified razor-wire barrier around my desk and spray all my adjacent workmates with tear-gas while it’s at it…

Then again, maybe I’m just having one of those mornings. evil

Prospective employers please note: I am blogging this, not doing it. My actual workmates think I’m a lovely person, and really I don’t hate them. It’s the customers who are currently earning my special, passionate malice.

Brief PC Case foolishness

In my time-killing perambulations this afternoon for the sake of ensuring that I don’t leave work embarrassingly early, I ran across the ultimate answer to the case-modding/LAN-partying geek’s problems… provided they’re wealthy geeks:

Yes folks, the Trans2000 portable PC caseexternal link is a mil-spec toughened PC case with a built-in 20″ LCD, amplified stereo speakers and detachable keyboard-with-pointing-device. Don’t ask what it costs. I don’t actually know, but I can make some educated guesses…

Arkham Horror, Internship Horror, PHP Horror, Shanty Horror, Laptop Horror


Played the recent new edition Arkham Horrorexternal link (the game with a token for everything) with K, CainBits and Minxdragonexternal link on Saturday night. K had been told that the game would probably take four or more hours to play though the first time. It took seven and a half. Given that we started at about 8:30pm, that took us through into the wee small hours of the night, far further than any of us had feared. Some may blame the silliness, some the alcahol, some the fat-tokens. I blame the dark eldar ghods, and the cat.
In mid game I had to drive E off to her second night of 11pm-9am shift-work on the ER. She seems to be coping better with this than she was, but the hours and the stress are mind-boggling. As I write I haven’t seen her since Sunday night. cry

<demented-drug-fiend> I WANT MY E! </demented-drug-fiend>
My work on the PHP registration page proceeds healthily: I have written many pages of validation code, and am starting to have a better appreciation for all those web-development toolkits that The K is always going on about.
I have also found another foolish net-toy with which to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting world: Shantyexternal link. Shanty takes text and an image and makes a postscript ‘poster’ with very fine coloured text making up the image. For example: A4external link A3external link A2external link
On a final, and completely unrelated note: it looks like The Great Laptop Upgrade is finally about to happen. It has only taken several years… neutral

Many interesting movies loom, and tiki drives me Insane

It’s a quiet weekend and I am essetially broke. E is sleeping after her 11pm-9am shift on the ER last night, so I am quietly blogging and coding up the user-registration page. I have given up on the Tiki once and for all: The Pear::Authexternal link package is just way too raw for use against a live LDAP. Insecure as hell too… yucky.

Many many very fine movies in the offing right now. There are five to which I am looking forward with particularly maniacal anticipation:

Also looking like they have great potential: Dukes of Hazzardexternal link, Red Eyeexternal link and Night Watchexternal link

Better start saving up for those movie tickets. Maybe I should be investigating some kind of discount-card scheme…?

Entering all those URLs has left me completely stuffed! Like this:
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(Snarfed from Auscultureexternal link via Clem Bastow’s rather disconcerting blogexternal link)