Archived News starting from 12-15-2007 and earlier
BlogAfter the
Morlocks holiday party, followed by a visit from Chase and the flatlanders last night, I decided to assemble the
inflatable snowman to help keep the good times rolling. Lisa has often told me how much she enjoys my obnoxious decoration, and the Morlock even stopped by promising to violate it frequently while I was setting it up. Repeated violations make me wonder if I'll get a 6th year out of this $50 investment, but even a 5 year eyesore was well worth the money, especially with so many
great memories.
The
Morlock messaged me today with the news that
Google Maps Street View had added our street to their image library. You can even move the camera angle to the ground and see the car that drove by taking the 360° images. I wasn't able to find anything displaying a date in the imagery, but since my truck is in the back and my Cougar is in the driveway I would place it somewhere around the time I was
shoveling rock in July. Now that I'm officially famous I'll be signing autographs for $1 each.
Lisas obsession with
Carcassone and a few other Xbox 360 arcade games has finally pushed my
gamer points over 1,000. By beating various online challengers she has fully unlocked the game achievements, which also happens to be the only game we own that's fully unlocked. With phase 1 complete, and Lisa fully ensnared in online gaming, the next step is to gradually move her up to more challenging games until she's fully dedicated to unlocking achievements in my name. The final phase of course involving the sale of various game currency she earns on eBay. Like a chinese game sweatshop but in southern Michigan.
Thank you to everyone who helped
celebrate the death of my 20s today. Now that I finally reached 3 decades I'm finding it's not so bad. As my sisters friend stated, turning 30 means you didn't die young, so I can now list that along with losing my hair and growing a gut as my accomplishments for the decade. Gifts were strictly forbidden but Stavos broke the rule with a Transformers Monopoly game. Lisa was exempt and bought me an Optimus Prime, two gnome shirts and an Optimus Prime blanket. The Transformers theme continued into her mega-party plan including an Optimus Prime cake and favors. Excessive jello shots rendered me incapable of stopping the party killer movie, but everything else went swimmingly. I know most of you won't speak to me again now that I'm officially old, but I appreciate you stopping by for one last visit before ex communicating me.
Stavos recently suggested
avatars for the comment section of this website. Not quite sure how I would fit the images in my compact comment area I resisted at first, but some gentle coaxing and a few mockups later and I was convinced. What else was I going to do for two hours anyways? While I was working on the design (before crying uncle with DIVs) Lisa asked "What is your evader supposed to be anyways?" It required a full 8 seconds of mental processing before I realized she was mispronouncing avatar, which then prompted several minutes of uncontrollable laughter and Lisa shakes. So now that you know why I call them "Evaders", next you'll ask "So what?" Well I don't really have an answer for that, but the dropdown allows you to choose from some preset Evaders (uploadable custom capability coming soon). Once you choose one, the preview shows below the dropdown and once you submit, it sticks along with the other fields in the cookie for next visit. Yes, way over engineered for a website 2 people visit on a regular basis, but fortunately for those 2 people, I made exclusive
TM custom©® avatars©®
TM and backfilled old comments with the same one. I promise I'll keep my sugar intake down in the future.
Last time the Steelers had a game on television, I discovered
football freak Lisa and made a
video to document her bizarre behavior. Tonight's game also wound up being televised locally, and this time I had an early christmas present in the form of a
Greg Lloyd jersey ready for her to wear. Even though I don't understand yelling at the TV, I'm glad I was able to
amplify her insanity.
Preparing to relax and enjoy my Saturday night, I booted up my
workstation and noticed the BIOS version on my
ASUS A8N Premium motherboard was 1009. A quick check revealed 1303 was the latest, which I promptly downloaded, and discovered dynamic BIOS updating was yet another thing my newly reloaded 64-bit Vista did not support. After installing my floppy drive from 1998 to complete the bootable BIOS update, I was disappointed to see my NVIDIA RAID firmware remained a lowly version 4.84. A quick Google search revealed ASUS is not as diligent as most motherboard manufacturers with their BIOS updates, and typically don't bother to update integrated device firmware. Fortunately the same search produced a link to the
Award BIOS Editor which just by downloading makes you feel like you're sticking it to "the man". After loading a
BIOS update I found on MSI that users reported also updated their RAID firmware, I was able to extract the RAID update and replace the old 4.84 block with the new 5.60 in the "official" 1303 BIOS for my A8N in the editor. Unsure if my hack update would work, do nothing at all, or completely brick my motherboard, I was surprised to have it work perfectly. The old NVIDIA RAID 4.84 configuration screen now calls itself NVIDIA MediaShield 5.60 with a
moderate performance gain.
Tired of waiting in line behind people who refuse to get off the phone? Don't want anyone to call your wife (or Canadian fiance) while you're making out with her? Have $220 to blow? Then you need a
cell phone jammer. Once I meet the third requirement, I plan to obtain one and fulfill the first two frequently. I know you're wondering, so yes this is also on my Christmas wish list.
My quest for a terabyte
completed over a year ago, I got to wondering what I could do for an encore. What I came up with will shock and amaze you:
two terabytes! With the expiration of my
Windows Home Server RC1 it was time to move on to the
120 Day Trial. Why not the full $120 version? Because I'm a cheap bastard and am extending my "free" options until my southern resource is able to hook me up with a discount. The trial does not support the reinstall option (since it's a trial) so since I had to do a full install I figured it was a good time to consolidate all my spare hard drives. The resulting double terabyte is something even Lisa can enjoy since the
six drives are now helping to warm the basement.
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