Archived News starting from 12-17-2010 and earlier
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Tonight was the TRON Legacy movie premiere and also a celebration of aging for
Excelcier. Evidently his birthday has some pretty hefty celebrity pull as Nicholas Cage as well as the ever elusive TomTron were both seen partaking of the premiere. Being surrounded by such star power only served to amplify the experience, as the movie itself was great. A believable storyline continuation and awesome CGI job on young Jeff Bridges sold it as a sequel very well. The dialog was sufficient, but not excessive and thankfully the drama was kept to absolute minimum. I can easily see the setup for a 3rd movie, so here's to hoping they go through with it before another 28 years go by.
Today was the first major snow of the year, and I took advantage of the mild temperature to
build a snowman army. After activating the inflatable eyesore, I added two more snowmen of varying sizes to fend off the threat of a Morlock attack. The quick drop in temperature was perfectly timed and ice-hardened the troops for added defense. The test finally came during Taco night and as you can see the army held strong against both the Morlocks and the Senators.
After going feature crazy with
ratings and my bandwagon jump to
facebook likes, I decided to become more refined and offer a simplier, more honest interface. The fact that only
Stavos used them had nothing to do with removing them. Now you can enjoy the simple pleasure of making Morlock and Canadian jokes along with random unrelated banter unhindered by attempts to add meaning.
My inflatable snowman enters it's 8th year of annoying neighbors and Lisa. I'm shocked it still works, but with the Morlock promising repeated violataions that should soon be remedied. Here you can see the Senator visiting for a router firmware hack (and opportunity to trip over the snowman tether lines)
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Not satisfied with standard definition satellite programming over s-video, I decided to explore HD set top box options for Windows Media Center. If I was "sharing" cable, the
Ceton tuner would be the no brainer solution, but since I'm stuck with satellite, the set top box is my only choice. Fortunately, the
Hauppauge HD PVR recently added support for media center. After upgrading my receiver, I exploited the component video hole in the DRM strangling HDCP that prevents me from piping HDMI directly into media center. While a painful workaround, it lights up a
pretty blue when recording and I can now enjoy the Walking Dead in 1080i, despite a significant lag changing channels.

I'd like to tell you a story about a senator named
Stavos. Every year, this brave senator holds his breath for my annual frost warning light post. It comforts him amid all the stress of kissing babies and paying off hookers to keep their mouth shut. This year, I failed him. My post was delayed due to work demands and eventually lost in the sea of bytes that was my notepad.exe file. This is my attempt to remedy that failure, and bring back some security he so desperately needs during these trying times. So I state to the world that today (posthumously) is the day my frost warning light illuminated! The
long tradition remains intact!
Lisa's nerd training is coming along swimmingly. Instead of "I can't watch movies" or "the TVs not working" she knew how to properly convey the exact issue she was experiencing. "Vault is on and the other computers can't connect" told me my home server was running but the router wasn't sending packets properly. The next step is her auto-diagnosis to reboot the router but I'm absolutely tickled about
her text message.

After finding an
HTC Surround for $300 on eBay, I decided to buy a phone that is incompatible with my provider.
Thanks to the
Kin, Verizon hates Microsoft meaning no WinPhone7 till at least next year, which also means I
had to take the absurd step of buying what is effectively an overpriced mini-tablet. I'm not proud of what I did, but I don't regret it either. My life-long sickness for cheevos
just got mobile, and my dream of a radio station database app got more real. I'm also hoping the entire platform avoids the Kins fate at least until I get a Verizon version and can sell
this stopgap on eBay. Now go forth, and spread the story of the man who bought a phone that he can't use for cheevos.

The annual
November LAN was dedicated to Starcraft 2 this year. The most epic of the games was
captured in a replay for posterity. Spoiler alert: I didn't win. The typical noob beat down by the pro players was in full force, roughly dividing in half the number of people enjoying themselves vs those in misery. Fortunately there was sufficient cheap Kirkland beer and shenanigans to prevent anyone from going postal. An expected 8-10 attendees exploded into 15 which cut into the dedicated Dance Central area preventing me from showing off my super fly dance moves to the group until later in the evening, when Marco, TomTom, Jeffords and I busted out some moves and got beat by a Champion table tennis AI. A frequent question during the times we don't blow a breaker is my electrical consumption during the LAN, which I remembered I now log on Google power, so for the first time I present the
power usage graph in all its glory. Almost forgot the obligatory
LAN Video, enjoy.
As sub 60 degree weather descends upon us, a glimmer of hope shines from my projector.
BFBC2, neglected and forgotten over the summer, is making a comeback. Tonight with the help of
Tigerbomb,
MorlockPrime,
TomTom,
Myrn and
MrPyroPuma we achieved a 6 person force of win and came back from a loss to dominate the next 4 rounds. Notably absent was
Stavos and
Joseph who will be mocked incessantly the next time they dare login. A short stint with Medal of Honor was all I needed to remember how awesome the team-based mechanics of BFBC2 blow everything else (save BF 2142) out of the water. With the Vietnam add on coming soon, the night of 8 person split squads is looking numerous.
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