Archived News starting from 02-08-2007 and earlier
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Six months ago, I built a mid-level PC out of leftover upgrade parts to play around with the then-beta Vista operating system. Feeling bad that Lisa had no computer at my house, I offered it up for her to use. I was thanked, and told she would "probably never" use it. Fast forward to today and it's become her primary computer. During the
condo cleanup, I decided it was time to bring her beloved mac to my house and set it up for her. I can definitely see the chick draw, since it resembles some kind of alien more than a computer. My network would have nothing to do with it, and for three days I tried to get it to recognize the ethernet port. I finally figured out the wireless software I installed at Lisas condo messed it up pretty bad, and after removing it, my network was
successfully infected with a mac. Sure it
looks innocent, but secretly I know it's waiting to wipe all my hard drives. Fortunately the chick factor hasn't degraded over time, and I can still get $500 for it when I "accidentally" ship it to the highest bidder. Whoops I said that out loud.

I thought it was cold
last week, but that was before -2.2ºF last night. Now we've dipped into negative on every common temperature scale except Kelvin, which puts us at a toasty 254.15º above absolute zero. Kelvin makes me feel warm all over. Strangely enough, the new low for the year happened at 4:20am, which puts the blame squarely on the original Morlock. Apparently
El Niño is no match for the Morlock.
-2.2 °F at 04:20 on 05 February |

After seeing Ultra 1024MB PC3200 memory was
$50 after rebate, I couldn't resist bumping my system memory from 2GB up to 3GB. I use same-model memory in my system for reliable
dual channel operation, and so far the ULT31664 chips have been good to me. Last week I learned exactly how good when I was re-educated on dual channel memory controllers. After my upgrade, I booted into Vista and had to re-run the Windows experience tool. I was shocked to find my memory score dropped over a point from
4.9 to
3.6. My
total worth as a person was below
MorlockPrime and the
Elder. My motherboard had fallen back to single-channel memory speeds since there was an odd number of chips. This was obviously unacceptable, so I scammed
Stavos into getting me another $50 rebate memory chip (one per household) which bumped me up to 4GB. Apparently the extra addressing operations take their toll on the controller, as I now only get a
4.6 score, placing me on par with MorlockPrime. An excellent example of how effective dual channel technology really is, how much of a sucker I am for good deals, and yet another look into the strange world of the nerd ego.
Stavos discovered some
very detailed photos of my house in
Virtual Earth. The angle and clarity of the shot (obviously taken from an aircraft) is amazing, and beats the crap out of all the (previously) amazing satellite photos. The car you see in my yard belonged to
Morlock #2, so I'm guessing early 2006 for the timeframe. Virtual Earth is also apparently hooked into
Snow White as it was able to confirm the Morlocks
originate from Morlock Street, as has been theorized.
Even though a morlock
beat me to it, I feel it's worth double-blogging on
Google Apps for Domains. They are that friggin exciting. My first attempt at appeasing
Grandpa and
MorlockPrime and their SMTP/POP3 lust was to use the Microsoft services included with
Server 2003. While the
SMTP service was straightforward enough, the
POP3 service was a joke. It felt like it was included as an afterthought, and the under whelming configuration screens seemed to support this theory. Fortunately, a determined morlock proves very resourceful and pointed me to the Google service. Once again Google delivers another shockingly free service that works like a charm. Just point your
mail exchanger records to Google and you can give your SMTP/POP3 worries over to them, just like every other problem you don't want to solve. Long live Google apps for domains! Long live Google! Obviously, if you have a domain on this server, I can hook you up. You know what to do.
Melanie has been infected with the Jaird disease for quite some time now, so they decided to celebrate the growing parasite with a
baby shower. But this was no ordinary baby shower; while the women got drunk on baby gifts, the men got drunk on hard liquor. There was even a
high resolution cake of which my request for the zebras slice was denied. I do miss those zebras.
With less than 2 months of winter left, mother nature is making up for lost time. Last night, the temperature hit a new low for this year at 7.7 °F. The depressing gray-death clouds of Michigan that slowly suck your life away
contributed to this low, but in a meteorological irony helped keep it above zero at night. You learn these things about clouds when you're haunted by them
constantly. The Morlocks might not be as warm as they're used to, but I'm betting they get more sun in their underground caverns than I do in Michigan.
+7.7 °F at 23:11 on 25 January |
Over 1,000 Gnomes were
brutally murdered near Perth, Australia in "Gnomesville," a sanctuary for oppressed Gnomes. Obviously perpetrated by someone suffering from Gnomophobia, it's a shame to see how once again societies misunderstanding and fear were translated into destruction.
Butt the Gnome, a long time supporter of Gnome rights, had this to say about his recent loss of brethren: "It's goddamn cold out here!"

This
Jan LAN was going to primarily focus on
Battlefield 2142, but technical difficulties prevented widespread use. Two unnamed individuals persisted in playing Battlefield despite rounds of Farcry and Unreal 2004 going on around them, they will be called pansies.
Mississippi Elder, Chris, and Huggins all made an appearance after an extended absence from the LANs, along with the regulars: Whiney,
The Kelleys,
Ron, and the soon-to-be-regular:
Lisa. Only one Morlock was present, leading me to believe they are from different clans, which would explain why they seem to avoid each other. Jaird understandably did not make the 4 hour drive, but Jeffords broke my heart by remaining in Ann Arbor without even a call. He will not be getting a valentines day card from me. Senator Kelley blatently
drank all my Mountain Dew, and the pansies will be holding a BF2142 specific party in the near future, stay tuned. Meanwhile here's the
timelapse from the
Gnome Cam.
What can I say about
NAIAS 2007 that hasn't been said about the past 5 NAIAS events? Somewhere around 2002 it just stopped being exciting, due mostly to the sagging economy and it's growing popularity as a disillusioned teen hangout. I’m sure my status as a non-buyer is also a contributing factor. The
senator and I make an effort to attend every year, expecting very little but unwilling to risk missing something interesting. This year had a few highlights such as a
weird rally car and a
650HP Viper. They also offered an early entry for people with cameras this year, which made for
lots of room instead of the usual jammed floor, a nice change from the last few years. I’m not holding my breath for next year, but the idea of my car being
hackable for 2008 may just bring me back into the excitement zone.
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