Archived News starting from 04-25-2010 and earlier
BlogWith spring here and my hippie needs approaching peak, I decided to invest in a
Energy Detective to monitor my electricity consumption. After
installing the sender unit, the receiver just needed to be plugged into the wall and my router. It has a web server built in, so now I just need to type http://power on my local network and I see
this but with my data. Not satisfied with a local-only solution, I quickly exploited the API and created the new
power page with a failed attempt at gauges that I hope to remedy soon. I expect heavy traffic, but this will hopefully eliminate the constant questions I get about my power consumption. It also reports to
Google Power so the corporation that owns the planet can also keep an eye on my electrical usage.
Despite the best efforts of my
ex-girlfriend, I received and activated my Starcraft 2 beta key today. As the download progresses, I bask in glorious nerd envy until someone figures out that now all you need to do is pre-order a copy to get a key. I pre-ordered mine over a year ago, and Amazon finally coughed mine up. Probably out of fear of what someone who keeps a pre-order for that long might do in retaliation if not appeased. Now is the time you grind your teeth in jealousy.
UPDATE: Just won my first game,
check out my replay! (pretty sure you can watch replays on the "leaked" beta, then you can pretend you're winning!)
The
KFC Double Down has received
increasing news coverage prompting
MantraPolo,
TigerBomb and I to try it out, proving how effective controversial food items market themselves. We were greeted with a
full size ad on arrival, but none of us were brave enough to try an
entire 1,540mg sodium laced double down, so we decided to split one into 3 pieces reducing the overall artery clogging risk. To get the complete southern KFC effect, it was eaten
in my pickup truck bed while we shouted obscenities at passersby. The
small piece I dared to eat wasn't as salty as I thought it would be, with the bacon and cheese barely able to stand out from the two chicken breasts. Closest match is chicken cordon bleu with a lot of chicken in the mix. So far no cardiovascular problems, but the day is young.
While
Stavos and I harassed Lisa via the rovio webcam, she was hard at work on
this drawing of our cat Sam. Upon hearing she was sketching him, Stavos remarked; "that cat is like a god in that house." A true statement, and a sketch definitely worthy of his status.
Immensely satisfied with myself over the triumph that was replacing rear drum brakes on my truck yesterday, I decided to
repeat the magic by swapping a lower control arm and changing brakes and oil on my Cougar. The success of all three allowed me to title the weekend "kickass car maintenance weekend" and leaves only a fuel filter change for a rainy day. Lisa was, of course, beside herself with joy after hearing of all the mechanical accomplishments I had made and brought the cat to share in the celebration, who promptly
pissed all over her in excitement. Robbie was
especially excited after seeing the cat piss, but more interested in burning the old control arm and brake pads in his newly created metal vaporizing fire. After Lisa finished calling all her friends and bragging about what an awesome mechanic I am we burned some oil and called it a night.
With the local Eloi population approaching dangerous levels, our resident Morlock
invited us over for a BBQ to discuss the situation. Distracted by the "Imagine If" board game, the burgers were cooked and served before we got around to discussing possible solutions. Determined our neighborhood would not devolve back into random Morlock attacks, I suggested we start brainstorming selection criteria to which the Morlocks smiled and assured me the problem was solved and that I had helped. Baffled but full of Mountain Dew, I followed the Morlock as he attempted to start a fire; to which I threw my uncollected yard waste on, smothering it beyond any hope of burning. The night was completed by a few rounds of Rock Band and iPhone controlled Rovio action.
The day has finally come. The update that I was
told to get excited about installed to my Xbox 360 this morning. The ecstasy I get from new features was at the same level as always, but this time it ended very flaccid. Curious how the newly accepted solid state media would stack up against the hard drive and DVD ROM, I did some load comparisons between a few games. As you can see, the prize contender didn't even put up a fight, in some cases actually loading slower than the DVD ROM drive. While I'm not complaining about free storage, a 228x speed USB drive should be able to beat a 5400 RPM drive handily. The Xbox 360 USB bus must have horrific overhead.
| Game (load time in seconds) | USB | DVD | HDD |
| Bioshock 2 | 40.1 | 39.5 | 26.6 |
| Borderlands | 16.8 | 20.5 | 15.3 |
| Battlefield BC2 SP | 50.9 | 28.1 | 24.6 |
| Battlefield BC2 MP | 27.3 | 28.1 | 22.5 |
After a visit to see Cleveland Jesus, I decided to take a day to
recuperate. Recuperation began with a 3 hour picnic in the park where Lisa gradually reduced questions and complaints to one of the lowest levels I've ever seen. After the picnic, I began tearing apart the drum brakes on my Ranger only to discover the driver side had completely disintegrated due to a locked adjuster and lots of rust. Lisa, meanwhile, cut up the remainder of my
chainsaw rage after she learned the alternative was assisting with the brake job. Satisfied I had absorbed enough sun, we finished the night with "
The Men Who Stare at Goats" which was not as good as the book (of course).
With the
downgrade of this server still jabbing me in the kidney, all it took was
this deal for another unnecessary processor upgrade. I now have a proper
Athlon 64 X2 dual core serving up these pages while the lowly
Sempron is finally out of its misery. That puts the new
system specs up to par for the immense demand in traffic this server regularly experiences with the 3 daily visitors.
After 48 hours of playtime, I have finally
completed Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Unbelievably, I continue to play despite having milked every point out of it. Every time I login to Xbox there is at least one other addict ready to knife some snipers with me. Not sure how much longer it will last, but it's definitely got me hooked.
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