Archived News starting from 01-07-2006 and earlier
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Today was the
Jan Lan, a now yearly event for fellow computer gamers to gather in celebration of first person shooter computer games. This year was again highlighted by Unreal Tournament 2004 and FarCry but the eyeball killing action of Quake III was not as intense. This year was also a record in terms of people attending, with 7 on 7 at once (14 active players) for a total of 17 counting the early and late shifts. The larger number of people made game setup more difficult (which cut into game time) but the additional people resulted in a higher percentage of antics. A few people also brought airsoft guns for physical first person shooting when we got bored with virtual. An excellent LAN, looking forward to the one next weekend at
Ron's More and more new hires at the place I work are sporting a "faux-hawk," a term given to me by a co-worker. He explained it to me after my look of confusion but instead of explaining it here I'll just
link to a definition. I thought it was a joke at first but after a google search I learned it passes as a legitimate name for a hairsyle. Ever since bell-bottoms (faux bottoms?) exploded on my college campus without warning in the late 90's I've felt out of touch with trends, so I'm sure this style has been around for awhile and I'm only now catching a whiff of it. Unfortunately I can't strive to keep up with this trend (thus falling from the elite social status I once held) due to my lack of hair down the center of my scalp. All I can do is hope for the reverse fauxhawk© to catch on soon. Yeah, that's a © you see which means I have marketing rights to this one so BACKOFF
Lastnights
new years party was a blast. A shooting range, foozball, air hockey, nintendo, fireworks and liquor kept everyone entertained. No vomiting of any kind this year and I still wound up with more liquor than when we started. A full 24 hours after the party the last partygoer left at 8:00pm tonight with a virus-free computer. Thanks to everyone that came, hope you all had fun.
Heading to lunch today, I passed an uncommon sight. A cop apparently hit someone then jumped the curb and landed in deep snow. The front end was pretty tore up despite the cop cattle guard. We lauged as we drove by and three of the four people in the car snapped a camera phone shot.
Duanehad the best one, so here it is for your enjoyment:
While talking with the Morlocks about their newfangled cable box, I decided to search around for remote scheduling for
XP Media Center and found
MCE WebGuide. It truely is a dream come true. The author took the time to make the interface mimic the MCE interface so it's easy for anyone familiar with MCE to use it. There's even a stripped down mobile version for scheduling from your phone. If you access it locally, you can also click a recorded program and play it on the computer. This could be done before through simple file sharing, but it's a much richer experience with the full interface. It requires turning on IIS and installing .NET 2.0 framework on the MCE machine, then making it accessible through your firewall if you want to schedule stuff from anywhere. Opening another port was not something I was looking forward to, but the convenience is worth the script kiddies. Oh yeah, it's free! (Although I donated, it's really that good).
Digerati \dij-uh-RAH-tee\,
plural noun:Persons knowledgeable about computers and technology.
This came across on the
word of the day today and I realized a good 75% of the people I associate with fall into this category. Apparently the word has been around for some time but I've only just now heard of it. I interpret the word to encompass geeks and nerds, but you aren't necessarily a geek or nerd if you are a digerati. Now that I'm armed with this new word expect me to overuse it immediately.
Today I assisted the
Morlocks in their move from my basement to
Beta (the house that will never sell). Due to lack of furniture, their cable modem is currently
setup on a chair and the DVR is
hooked up to a 12" TV, both perfect photo opportunities. After having them in my basement for over a month and a half, Missy and I will be going through Morlock withdrawal for awhile. Fortunately
Ron has volunteered to visit from time to time and play Planetside in my basement to help us deal with this painful withdrawal.
Tonight
Stavos,
Mark and I decided to secure a tow strap to my truck hitch and
pull each other on an inflatable sled. What better way to enjoy the snow than risk death for the sake of entertainment. We rotated driver, cameraman and sledder for the better part of an hour until our faces went numb from the flying snow. Afterwards we did some good old fashioned donuts in a parking lot. There was so much snow today it knocked the
Gnome Cam offline when some shrubs fell over and pulled the video cord out. It also
disabled my anemometer until I was able to shoot it with my super soaker. Missy was
very excited about the whole event, especially the
botched "Brad died" attempt.
You probably won't get it unless you know at least one person in this photo. Many thanks to
Stavos for this comedy jewel, I laughed for a good 30 minutes:
Lloyd 911.
Checking the
Gnome Cam for this morning, it seems the Morlocks forgot to logout of
PlanetSide lastnight and the game spilled over into my front yard. One of the players must have decided Missy's Trailblazer was a
Lightning Tank and threw an EMP grenade at it. The grenade subseqently knocked out my camera while the player most likely discovered it was in fact a passenger truck and not an enemy vehicle. Stupid n00bs!
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