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I received two letters in the mail today, one was my
rebate check from American Express for $536 and
the other was from the secretary of state telling me
how bad a person I am. They also demand I pay $50 of my rebate to them for being a bad person. My last ticket involved a printout of my
snapshot history proving I had in fact not been speeding, but the judge waved her hand and said "you have a record!" which means I'm guilty even when proven innocent. I'm most certainly not paying the $50 fee they ask for, hopefully I get a warrant out for my arrest.
With SSD prices falling to less than 40¢/GB, and my laptops
4 year anniversary approaching, I had the 2 excuses I needed to blow $200 on a
240GB SSD. The
measly 5.2 the old 5200RPM drive chugged out was replaced by a more
respectable 7.6. Battery life seems better as well, or so Lisa claims after commandeering the laptop shortly after I was done with the upgrade. With my
raidtastic primary system and now laptop running SSDs, only my home server, web server and Xbox remain locked in a spinning platter of legacy media. All other devices embrace the solid state future.
Lilas first trip to
Skyzone was a success.
After some hesitation, she was soon
jumping merrily and
learning about awkward social encounters with other kids during "toddler time."
When we got home, I introduced Lila to my
8-bit cylinder snowman which she helped me build, but was
unimpressed with. I took advantage of the above-freezing weather to startup my Cougar and Motorcycle as well, rousing them from their slumber and learning how fun it would be to
ride my motorcycle on snow.
With Verizon finally
releasing the latest WP8 update, it was time to
address my
update error. I knew the easy solution was a hard reset, so my first order of business was to
fling 5,000 birds and
earn 100,000 coins since,
for whatever reason, the cloud backup doesn't include app settings. While I worked the long grind to complete the games, I had a useless
conversation
with Windows Phone Support in the hopes I might avoid a hard reset. While prompt and responsive, they had no answer for me. After popping the final cheevo on both games, I took the plunge
and did the reset. The restore was pretty extensive, missing only my start screen and app settings. Now able to update the phone, I got me some
portico goodness which hopefully includes
group MMS messaging.
Comparing before/after it looks like I got some additional firmware updates as well, and hopefully something that prevents
my update check from pooping out for next update.
Despite my better judgement, Senator Kelley convinced me to pre-order the new SimCity after showing me the last beta. With the second beta having now arrived,
my pre-order put me in the special sucker category of eligible. Still limited to an hour of gameplay, for whatever reason (most likely to prevent boredom and then pre-order cancel).
This time trains were teased with track running the north border of my city, but I was unable to build any track of my own.
I protested by running 50 rail-road crossings along it, but none of my citizens seemed to mind. I learned putting a park every 4 squares will peg residential demand, and industrial
areas don't care if you put a sewage outflow pipe in the center of their zone. I can't wait for final release so I can build an all-rail city and execute any citizen that complains about lack of roads.
An intense game of Conquest in BF3 with Cheffords, George and Myrn got an added perk of the unkillable soldier. While capping a flag, we each emptied an entire clip into
an enemy who reacted by not moving at all (or dying). Curious, we swarmed him and proceeded to lay clip after clip (and tank round) into him with no effect. It was a bug equal in
curiosity to the
giraffe neck, probably caused from a lag disconnect that left the server trying to decide what to do
with the character. Much fun was had by all, and the anomoly eventually disappeared, but the memories will last forever.
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.
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I received two letters in the mail today, one was my rebate check from American Express for $536 and
the other was from the secretary of state telling me how bad a person I am. They also demand I pay $50 of my rebate to them for being a bad person. My last ticket involved a printout of my snapshot history proving I had in fact not been speeding, but the judge waved her hand and said "you have a record!" which means I'm guilty even when proven innocent. I'm most certainly not paying the $50 fee they ask for, hopefully I get a warrant out for my arrest.
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