Still waiting for the Xmas feeling ... Monday 19th December 2006

[leng]

Back at work after a week off. Feeling festive ... not.

[leng]

Visited dad & spoke to his consultant. Basically, if he doesn't start eating soon there is not much they can do.

Made a final attempt to fix my busted machine. Succeeded in causing it to generate a motherboard flash screen (which I have never seen before). Then the bios clock lost the date & time and I got back to the
"Setup is continuing ..."
Reboot
loop. Attempting to install from scratch results in a machine without any network support which will not accept the drivers for my Netgear card and for which I cannot find the original motherboard drivers. I'm going to see if I can reinstall the disk image of the original configuration (I'll have to replace the ATI graphics card) and if that fails I'll try activating the rescue partition. I clearly need to review my disaster recovery procedures, though.

Meanwhile, I decide to bite the bullet and order a new system, which should arrive shortly after Xmas. It is a little over the top, but there has been so much crap recently that I thought I'd cheer myself up.
Elite Extreme QX G80
Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme QX6700 Quad Core Processor(2.66GHz,8MB Cache,1066MHz)
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
Aluminium ATX Midi Tower + 1000W PSU - Black
ASUS P5N32-E SLI nForce 680i SLI(C55XE) Mainboard - Core 2 Duo/Quad-Core - ATX
2048MB DDR2 900MHz Memory -( 2x 1024MB Kit)
2x500GB Serial ATA Hard Drive with 16MB Buffer
2xSuper Format SONY 18x Dual Layer DVD Writer +R/-R/RW/RAM
768MB nVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX
Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio Sound Card (oem)
Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard & G7 Cordless Laser Gaming Mouse
Free Microsoft Works 8.5 + 60 Days Microsoft Office Trial
Free Cyberlink Video Editing Suite - 7 titles (oem)
6x USB 2.0 Ports (8x possible on motherboard)
2x IEEE1394 Firewire (onboard)
1x Gigabit LAN (onboard)
Internal 33-in-1 Memory Card Reader
Premiere Warranty - 3 Years On-site-Parts & Labour-T&C

[Charinida]

Ouch Leng! My thoughts to you and your family.

Been thinking of getting a new mobo/cpu combo for the current gaming rig - but I just bought a new Vid card that's not PCI. :( And I would have to buy new memory as well since the current sticks are PC3200. Need to see how the finances work out later on.

Played L2, and got the little Mystic up to L20 and she's now a Shillen Oracle. Got PK'd by someone who thought she was a bot (the PKer was part of guild called BotKillerzInc). Uh, hello! My lil' inkie is in a guild, picking up her drops and other stuff non-bots do. /le sigh. Now to work on determining whether to wear Light Armour or Robes. Both have different looks and design depending on armours in question. Then again, with DE females, there isn't much coverage either way. :D

Been a rash of sick calls at work lately... Didn't get stuck with OT last night (wheee!). Heard that our sister station (MDW-Chicago Midway) lost two contracts (AA/F9) thus they will be either letting people go or furlough folks. Ouch.

Still have some more cards to send out. Why is it, every year, I tell myself I'm gonna send cards out early (or gifts) and I end up late?

[Drax]

Spent the early to mid evening at Christmas Cantata practice, then spent the rest of the evening just hanging out with Becky.

And in regards to MNF, i thought (and was hoping) it'd be the Rudi show, but turns out the entire Cinci offense was a no show. Good game, Ash; was kinda scared (as scared as you can be, in a virtual game where you have no control whatsoever in the outcome) of you completely destroying me with Chad Johnson. So I move on to face Serani in the WWTFFL finals! Good luck this week, serani! :D

[Lycos]

Last night, I went out with Cindy to dinner at Red Lobster. MMmmmmmm! And we went and saw "Pursuit of Happiness". It was a good movie. Makes you think a little about your own economic vulnerability and what happiness is really about. Or maybe not! ;)

Got home, and did some work on getting my flex account reimbursement. It's a pain!

[Serani]

So I move on to face Serani in the WWTFFL finals! Good luck this week, serani! :D
I am so dead. :lowrazz: Edited to add: I'm still in something of a shock that I made it this far. I think it's ironic that the 2nd place winner of the league has the least amount of points overall in regular season (FFL reg season, that is).

Our thoughts are with your family, Leng. I'm sorry you (and they) have to go through this, especially at this time of year. Nice machine, though. Maybe that will help a little. :)

Last night...spent the evening signing and FINALLY getting our cards ready to mail, made dinner, gave the kids haircuts and made some muddy buddies and oatmeal fudge (both holiday favorites around here). Was gonna wrap, maybe play, but it was after 9:30 by the time I finished and all I really wanted to do was sleep. It's been a nutty week. Thankfully, I got some rest and can hopefully face the rest of the week without too much trouble. My boss is off Thursday and Friday, so at least I won't have too much going on then (cause he's not just off, he's out of town. W00t!). On the down side, it's supposed to get close to 60 again by Friday. Yay for greeting another weekend full of headaches. I hope the weather people are wrong.

[DirkDarkBlade]

Got home, cleaned up a bit, ate. I planned to make some Christmas cookies for work. I'd never made this type and when I read the instructions it states to make the dough and refridgerate it for two days. (Sigh) I also had to wait for some of the ingredients to reach room temp (the butter was frozen) So I logged into WoW and found Bel on line (yeah). Went to IF and picked up the "Holiday" and "Father Winter" quests. It was latish so I decided to camp out and make the cookie dough. I did get the cookie dough made and put in the fridge. It was messier and took longer than most cookies I've made before.

Tonight I need to stop by the store. I also plan to go ahead and make the cookies tonight.

I plan to play tomorrow night assuming plans don't change. Oh and sometime during all this I need to get a couple of training runs in.

[Aananla]

Elite Extreme QX G80
Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme QX6700 Quad Core Processor(2.66GHz,8MB Cache,1066MHz):eek!:
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
Aluminium ATX Midi Tower + 1000W PSU - Black :eek!:
ASUS P5N32-E SLI nForce 680i SLI(C55XE) Mainboard - Core 2 Duo/Quad-Core - ATX :eek!:
2048MB DDR2 900MHz Memory -( 2x 1024MB Kit) :eek!:
2x500GB Serial ATA Hard Drive with 16MB Buffer :eek!:
2xSuper Format SONY 18x Dual Layer DVD Writer +R/-R/RW/RAM
768MB nVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX :eek!:
Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio Sound Card (oem)
Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard & G7 Cordless Laser Gaming Mouse
Free Microsoft Works 8.5 + 60 Days Microsoft Office Trial
Free Cyberlink Video Editing Suite - 7 titles (oem)
6x USB 2.0 Ports (8x possible on motherboard)
2x IEEE1394 Firewire (onboard)
1x Gigabit LAN (onboard)
Internal 33-in-1 Memory Card Reader
Premiere Warranty - 3 Years On-site-Parts & Labour-T&C
:floored: That is a pretty amazing system Leng.

Played a little. Jadiir continued the massacre in Steamfont. Also tried to continue the HQ for the Serrated Bone Dirk but couldn't quite pull off the ambush in The Crypt of Betrayal.

[shadowgate]

Leng, very sorry to here about your dad! Hopefully he will get turned around! Our thoughts and prays continue for you and your family.

[Shiz]

Spent most of the day in the city at the Wolverine Worldwide (WWW) analyst conference. They make Merrell and Hush Puppies branded shoes. Meeting was unenlightening and the stock is ahead of itself. The "gift bag" was sweet though: Merrell roller suitcase, gift certificate for one pair of shoes at www.trackntrail.com (http://www.trackntrail.com) and a stuffed doggie.

After the kids were abed, we Netflixed eps 3-4 of 24, season 5.

[attriel]

got home and decided to check K in for the next couple days still ; last night wasn't going to be a problem, but if i'm throwing around large furniture to get it out where they can reasonably get to it tomorrow, he needs to NOT be underfoot going "hey whatchya doing? can i help? why don't you sit down, i wanna nap. play with me!!!" ;o

after that we went grocery shopping and melting pot. came home, she called her mom back (had a voicemail) so i logged into dungeon runners for a bit, intending to switch to the xbox when she got off the phone. ended up playing DR for a couple hours before going to bed

--attriel

[EricStratton]

I too am not feeling the Xmas spirit. Mostly b/c it's freaking 50-60 degrees here. Not very Xmas-y at all for this area.

Worked some. Studied some. Played Civ4 some. Damn Incans beat me to Space by 11 turns. Grr!

Watched the Survivor finale, Yul deserved it, pretty good season given how everyone was freaking out about dividing the teams by race. Watched the Nip/Tuck finale. Interesting way for them to "reboot" the series like BSG did.

Watched MNF. Turned it off and went to bed after Indi scored their first TD of the 2nd half. Looked pretty over at that point. "Manning to Harrison" is just scary. I wonder if someone will make a poem out if it like "Tinker to Evers to Chance."

[Raveneye]

Worked on wrapping Christmas gifts (man do I ever suck at that activity) while watching MNF. Had to turn off the TV halfway throuogh before X-mas gifts wound up as projectiles flying at the screen. Not that I had any real hope of the Bungles beating Indy in the RCA Dome, but it wasn't even close. Now we have to win out over Denver @ Denver and Pittsburgh here at home if we want to make the playoffs and lose in the first weekend. Sigh.

Played some Dungeon Runners to round out the evening.

[Erudite]

Not that I had any real hope of the Bungles beating Indy in the RCA Dome, but it wasn't even close. Now we have to win out over Denver @ Denver and Pittsburgh here at home if we want to make the playoffs and lose in the first weekend. Sigh.

Ha! My Steelers are still alive (barely) in the playoff hunt! In fact, if things break just right, they could even sneak into the fifth spot in the AFC.

Yeah, more likely that they're done. But still, it's nice to have hope. :lowrazz:

[Shiz]

I just want the Eagles to send Dallas packing.

[kullen]

I just want the Eagles to send Dallas packing.

I just want the Rams to.. bah, who am I kidding, I just want the Rams to stop embarrassing themselves.

Hey, at least we have Baseball right? :goodie!:

[Caranthir]

I want the Browns to draft Troy Smith.

Played Dungeon Runners most of the evening. Got Caranthir, my ranger, to level 6.

[EricStratton]

I just want the Rams to.. bah, who am I kidding, I just want the Rams to stop embarrassing themselves.

Hey, at least we have Baseball right? :goodie!:
Well, you are playing the Skins this week. Since it seems we try to play to match the skill of the opponent you don't need to worry about seeing the same team that played so well against NO two days ago. We'll be much worse. :lowrazz:

[Sylvene]

Worked late and finally did all my Christmas cards - at work where there's power - got hungry, headed to the house for a bowl of hot soup, a bowl of hot stew, a hot bath, read by the fire, then bed.

I'm keeping warm but this is getting tiresome. It's been 5 days. The huge tree that took down the lines feeding this area is still down. They've just tidied up the lines somewhat and put up a couple of cones / barriers.

I thought I'd go see my doc for this low-grade fever, chest congestion, virus aftermath thing but he's had no power for 5 days too! Checking to see which near-by Doc-in-a-box / Minute-Clinic is up and running.

Oh... here's a pic of me this morning having my morning cuppa tea. The cloak is black, so you can't see much of it. :D
http://www.sylvene.com/images/Sylcold.jpg

[EricStratton]

Mmm, shots of Robitussin w/ a tea chaser. Tasty. :lowrazz:

Seriously tho, Sylv, that's rough. I hope they get you your power back soon cuz those candles have about had it. ;) Thought about buying a generator?

[DirkDarkBlade]

I hope they get the power fixed soon! And I hope you do get to feeling better quickly.

[Sylvene]

Mmm, shots of Robitussin w/ a tea chaser. Tasty. :lowrazz:

Not to mention the brandy in the tea... :lowlol:

Seriously tho, Sylv, that's rough. I hope they get you your power back soon cuz those candles have about had it. ;) Thought about buying a generator?

Not one to be had in the entire city or it's surrounds. The storm was wicked. But that's now on the shopping list. :p A generator to run the blowers of the gas heating system.

The poor fish... *sigh* I tried. I was removing cold-water and putting in hot, but the stress and cold has done them in.

[Asharad]

played last night.

An all LoW group hit Cov, an upper level instance. We actually handled the middle named (which I think is potentially the hardest) fairly easily.

I apologize if I was a little cranky. At times I felt like instructions were being given to make everything go smoother but nobody was listening, which was slightly frustrating. But I'm a pain, so factor that into it.

[shadowgate]

played last night.

An all LoW group hit Cov, an upper level instance. We actually handled the middle named (which I think is potentially the hardest) fairly easily.

I apologize if I was a little cranky. At times I felt like instructions were being given to make everything go smoother but nobody was listening, which was slightly frustrating. But I'm a pain, so factor that into it.

No, it could have gone a bit smoother but for many it was either the first or second time there and for some it was a learning experience on many levels! Some of those rooms give expert raiders pause. Also, there where a few "chefs" giving out info, so that probably didn't help.