Archived News starting from 02-09-2013 and earlier
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In contrast to Lila's
first birthday of too many people, Lisa originally planned a smaller group to celebrate this year.
Those plans were derailed when the bowel goblins decided to attack and she was disabled in the hospital. Rather than leave it at that, a secret party was arranged for
family members only to help induce stress while she recovered. Despite the 15+ attendance, Lisa refused to host the secret party downstairs where there is ample room, resulting in yet
another cramped Lila party. Next year it's time to move to Chuck E. Cheese.
After years of suffering with a pale pink server room, I decided to re-invent this neglected space with a dark blue makeover and a discontinued space themed border. I actually bought the border over 2 years ago, but extreme procrastination delayed it's unveiling. It also turns out I'm exactly 20 ft short of the discontinued border, leaving a nice unpainted gap to remind me why I should stop procrastinating. I also took the opportunity to convert it into a full-fledged office so Lila can continue her manifest destiny of the house and inherit the old one as her new toy closet.
After an email informing me the
free media center add-on to Windows 8 was about to expire,
I panicked and decided it was time to upgrade
Electron to Windows 8. After my final Win7 backup to my home server, I nuked the system
partition and loaded up Win8, which seemed to go pretty quick. It found all the drivers except InfiniTV which was a quick download (and firmware update), then proceeded with the standard CableCARD readyness check
and TV guide setup. While I managed to get Win8 to auto login on startup,
this article
confirmed the "start media center on startup" option was deleted, so my upgrade was actually a downgrade. Everything else looked identical, so I definitely don't recommend the switch.
My guess is the new Xbox will have some sort of centralized DVR function, making my media center obsolete, but I'll keep this downgrade for now and see if it's any less stable.
A surprising
12 person turnout responded to
Tigerbombs BF2142 LAN call, and we actually had 11/12 of the attendees all playing 2142 at the same time. This only lasted a few hours of course, with 4 people eventually being jerks and playing a 4-person max game while everyone else struggled in the giant maps of 2142. Tigerbomb was uncharacteristically silent, due most likely to a lack of bourbon. He was no where near his all time high of
two years ago. The Senator and I made sure our toddlers were uncomfortably close to all the childless folk, and James got his first taste of Starcraft II.
Webcam and
timelapse to excite your loins.
Despite what the
weather station says, it officially hit 0° today according to my Focus.
I feel the need to report this since my last
Cougar frost post was over 2 years ago, and
now that the Cougar is abandoned in the barn it's time to move on.
My first
NAIAS without the Senator since
2006 was focused entirely on Lila.
Her initial shock from the crowd and lights wore off quickly, and she was more than accomodating with me placing her in inappropriate and irresponsible places. Eventually, I made the mistake of
letting her linger in the back of a pickup truck longer than I should have and she got comfortable. Moving on involved an extended tantrum that was only quelled by introducing her to the Fiat
display where the cars were just her size. After she fell in love with a green couch occupied by a creepy sleeping teen, another tantrum convinced me it was time to go, but not before using her
siren wail to beeline for the basement. There I found the disappointing Focus ST Shelby variant, which had no performance changes whatsoever.
A physical letter arrived in my mail today notifying me of a new upgrade for the Sync system in my Focus ST. Suddenly giddy, I hopped on my computer
to find a 1.5GB download required for the update. While it downloaded, I actually read the letter that said I had to order a physical SD card replacement before the upgrade or my nav wouldn't work.
It took me 10 seconds to decide to upgrade anyway, blinded by upgrade excitement. The letter also said "up to an hour" and "keep your engine running during the upgrade" which turned out
to be good advice, as it was almost exactly an hour before the upgrade
completed, and then another 10 minutes before it
really completed.
Aside from yelling about the wrong SD Nav car everything seems to be working fine, but no major changes other than the exterior temp now shows up at the top. Hopefully the
replacement SD card will show me a world of wonder with the new nav system.
The ups and downs of the giant snowman have been well documented this past week, but it seems todays wind finally scored a victory I'm too lazy to rectify.
After inspecting the webcam footage, the southwest mooring line looks to have de-anchored, which created the initial instability. Shortly afterwards, we can assume the northwest line buckled as well, eliminating
all counter to the westerly winds. The Snowman then wanders east, until the remaining lines keep him flapping like a fish for freedom before I told Lisa to put it out of it's misery and unplug it.
Hopefully there is no permanent damange and it can rise again for it's 11th year of terror.
Ever since my
first windows phone, there has been at least one new Xbox LIVE game released every week.
That means every month I have the potential to be 800 gamerscore richer just by playing on my phone.
Today marks almost a full month of no new games, and
rumor has it this may be a permanent drought.
Meanwhile, Nokia keeps releasing exclusive games that I'm not allowed to buy. I managed to play
the first of these exclusives
before I
sold my Lumia 900, but now I'm locked out of 1200 cheevos because Nokia went exclusive to AT&T for 6 months.
Sadly, I can see myself buying an old Lumia 710 off eBay just to get these cheevos now instead of waiting another 3 months for the Verizon debut. The 100k milestone does not appear to have
affected my sad cheevo obsession, and the allure of
FC Rocket,
Blobster,
Parking Mania,
Picnic Wars,
Trivial Pursuit and
Spy Mouse may be too strong for my insanity.
Having survived ground zero of the flu, I decided my superpowered immune system might be indicative of an overall power of healing. I put my theory to the test by
actually inspecting the disabled snowman only to discover a blown fuse. As you would expect, a spare fuse was located right next to the blown one for maximum eyesore uptime. A quick fuse swap and
my
10 year old snowman is back in action, obnoxious as ever.
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