Rain rain rain, where? - Wed, Oct 4th 2006

[Charinida]

/me thinks the rain should be falling on the wild fires instead.

[Charinida]

More rain and wind... Not as bad as the previous day... Temps dropped a lot as compared to the 80s we had the day before (or something like that).

Needless to say, another day of OT but only 2hrs this time which wasn't bad since it was on a 9-5 shift. Along with the weather delay, there was a GS (Ground Stop) 'cos of a radar failure. Oh joy...

Picked up a couple of chorizo tacos, browsed various forums and news sites. Popped into CoH and L2, laid (layed?) on the bed for what I thought was a couple of minutes ('cos of a headache) only to find out I had fallen asleep for a couple of hours with my glasses on. Bleh, after midnight. Checked forums, updated iTunes... Had troubles getting iTunes to start up again. Uninstalled QuickTime and iTunes, then re-installed. Picked up BSG - The Story So Far (https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/tellAFriend?type=2&id=195699594) (free)and hope to watch it later today (Thur) after work...

Missed the South Park WoW episode. /sulk And nope, iTunes doesn't have that eps. Hey, thought I'd check just in case ya know.

Not much else... Got a minor headache right now still...

[Caranthir]

More work on my paper, then logged Calliandra on for a bit and completed a cooking quest in Duskwood. Dinged 19. Also watched Lost, the Nine, and South Park.

[Greebo]

DNP: Got the new Pratchett finally, started reading it, then we watched X3, and then I went back to Wintersmith. Will catch the south park tonight. :)

[Lycos]

Watched the kids last night. Got everything done in time to watch the end of "The Nine", and scooted the youngin's off to bed in time to watch the South Park episode. That was very funny! I needed it last night. :D

[Sagar]

Left work early for a GE Volunteer event at a local elementary school.

GE donated a bunch of Lego Mindstorm kits http://www1.lego.com/eng/education/mindstorms/home.asp?pagename=lmfsc&l2id=4_4

to a local "at risk" elementary school (5th grade class) and they have a week long event to build a robot the can traverse an obstacle course that has a large U turn, a bridge, and a tunnel. We were there to help them design and program the robot.

LOTS of fun.. but SOOOO like trying to herd cats. :rolleyes:

Then we went to kitchen / bath showrooms looking at fixtures (considering doing some remodeling).

Then we had routine dental appointments.

Then we went and got a DVR (from the cable company. Only $4 extra per month vs $200 for Tivo + $15/mo). Then to dinner.

Then, instead of playing, I got the exquisite joy of squeezing said DVR into entertainment center and doing the electronics-cable-connection-by-braile technique :frown1: .

Finally got it done - about half way through the Dancing With the Stars results show.

About 9:30, I finally managed to get to WoW. Found I'd won the auction for Frost Oil recipe so I made some for Murgos and his blacksmithing quests.

Then I popped over to Gadgetzan, killed a few exite trolls for the exp. Got two very nice drops. And called it a night.

Today, I get to take a cat and dog to the vets while Jennifer gets taken out for dinner and a boat cruise around the beach as a good-bye party from her old job.

:rolleyes:

I should DEFINATELY be able to play WoW tonight!

[Serani]

Class. I gave my presentation (yay!) and I GOT A PERFECT SCORE!!!!! :eek!: :floored: :goodie!: :pint: :lowcool: :biggrin:

Basically danced my way home. ;) After chatting a bit with Joe and getting a bite to eat, we watched a couple more SG1 episodes. We're on season 6 and I thought I wasn't going to like it as much (since Daniel Jackson isn't in it) but Jonas holds his own very well. He's a much better character than I thought he was.

Dunno what's up yet tonight.

[Caranthir]

Grats Katy! :goodie!:

[leng]

Nice Serani!

Played a little WoW last night and got the warlock to 17. Watched some spy/agent thing on the box memorable only for its attempt to cram more cliches/min than anything that has gone before.

[EricStratton]

Congrats, Serani!

Let's see yesterday I watched: South Park, Lost, Eureka (season finale), Heroes (definitely not as bad as y'all made me think it was going to be), Studio 60, and Nip/Tuck.

Played: Psychonauts (and beat it), Civ4, and Guitar Heroes.

Psychonauts is definitely one of hte best platformers I've ever played. If you have an Xbox or PS2 or PC and like platformers I recommend picking it up on the cheap.

[Andrea]

DNP.

work is horribly stressful. But i guess that is alright considering that I am grateful that I have a job. I have a deadline that I know I cant meet.

Anyways, came home, ordered take out. Watched South Park. Went to bed shortly thereafter.

[Biaxin]

Hey,

Way to go, Katy! :goodie!:

I have spread the word of the plug in 'Gas detection monitor' around work and it might actually get done. We need to do something, and the other option is shipping her to the State Hospital. The poor old dame is a real disruption to the other residents.

[Lycos]

Good job Katy!

Sorry about the stress Andrea!

Psychonauts, huh? Sounds interesting.

[Serani]

Thanks, guys!

The presentation was about Working from Home. I used a cartoon on the title page that Rubi did for me. You can see it here (http://www.legendsofwestwood.org/gallery/showimage.php?i=201&c=3) in the gallery. I got a lot of laughs and it went a LONG way toward helping me relax for the rest of the presentation.

[Lycos]

The presentation was about Working from Home. I used a cartoon on the title page that Rubi did for me. You can see it here (http://www.legendsofwestwood.org/gallery/showimage.php?i=201&c=3) in the gallery. I got a lot of laughs and it went a LONG way toward helping me relax for the rest of the presentation.

I like that cartoon. Hey Joe! Have you thought about putting something like that out? A cartoon about a working Mom, and the kids? Of course the Dad has to be the idiot. ;) :lowlol:

Actually, it might be better to have a smart Dad, but distracted all the time. ;)

[Caranthir]

Heh, that's awesome! :mrgreen:

[Sylvene]

I'm losing the "Make the 4 yr old take an afternoon nap" fight. Yesterday wasn't just zero for three, but the 3 yr old wouldn't nap either. It was an absolutel brilliant day so I took them out to the Park after lunch, brought them back (tired out, I had hoped) for tea, chilled a bit on PBSKids, then tried to put them to bed. Yah... right.

Watched Shark Tales, then dinged Rank 2 in DDO.

[Raveneye]

DNP.

Last night was TV night again. Watched Jericho, LOST and The Nine. Not sure I'll stick with "The Nine". A whole show about what happened to some people during a bank robbery? Seems kind of boring, like LOST but with way more flashbacks and way less actual mystery.

Got up early this morning to get sick. Fun. Read a lot of "His Majesty's Dragon", the first Temeraire novel. It's a lot better than I thought it would be, and I'm enjoying it so far.

[Kiir]

I've had an urge for awhile to restart playing EQ2 so last night I actually broke down. Went to best buy and bought the last expansion and then patched a bunch. Logged in after all the patching and waved at the people who were there. I will need to get use to the interface and such again and upgrade my spells most likely but overall, I should be playing again.

Other then that didn't do much yesterday, made baked potatoes for dinner, surfed the web a bit, that's about it.

[Sir Rubi]

I like that cartoon. Hey Joe! Have you thought about putting something like that out? A cartoon about a working Mom, and the kids? Of course the Dad has to be the idiot. ;) :lowlol:

Actually, it might be better to have a smart Dad, but distracted all the time. ;)
I HAVE always wanted to draw a regular web comic, but my problem is coming up with material :/

And thanks muchly all :) It was her inspiration; I just put it on paper :)

[Greebo]

I HAVE always wanted to draw a regular web comic, but my problem is coming up with material :/ You've got it now!

You should go for it - start putting together some ideas. Between everyone here on the forums (not to mention, um, you know, the missus), you got plenty of tech support w/ the web side. :)

[deepfred]

grats katy =)

aye was good to see mos in game last night =)

i bailed on PS last night, things have been very slow lately and ozeki needed some <3 yesterday. i got him almost all of level 44 by visiting every place i could think. most of it came from circling all of zek which he hadn't seen much of yet, all of the islands in barren sky, the few places in TT he could get to, all of shin village, and most of DoF, including some 15 odd dings in Maj Dul, peeking into PoF and Clefts.

he met up with a young group earlier in the day doing a manstone run, and went CoD > RoV > Varsoon without trouble and got that as well. after a lamish pick up in SS to end the effort off he called it a night, 40% into 45.

now that i realize i have splitpaw and the other adventure pack i should be able to sneak him lots more exp soon thru walkaround quests and soloing in splitpaw. the best news is again ozeki has not done any collection quests either, so those will all help once he hits 50. hoping to pull that off in next week or so.

big presentation tomorrow so i'll be prepping for that here and there today, but hoping to get ozeki another level today. ozeki has two good masters coming up with clarity master at 47 and his tash master for 50 (never did sell it).

had a great chat with a probable next boss i'll be interviewing with friday, going to finally go internal and inch towards a branding director job by being a web tech company's sr in-house designer. just the lynch pin i need for awhile transitioning back to silicon valley, just hope the potential team doesn't hate me.

fingers crossed.

[DirkDarkBlade]

Congrats Serani.

Last night I logged in early to play WoW and found myself alone. I decided to adventure in the north part of the right side contenent (name?) where a map said there was tons of Mithril. I adventured around and accross from ocean to ocean. I found not one mithril node (grrrr). I did find some 52 mobs and found I could take them on provided they lined up and stayed neatly attacking one at a time. After a while they grouped up and four or five of them jumped me. I got away from three but the remaining two weren't giving up and they killed poor ole Murgos. So I rezed, and gated back to SW. Where I spent entirely too much money buying mirthril and truesilver. Did some blacksmithing and still being alone decided to camp, when Drason arrived. Chatted a bit, then camped.

Sagar called me soon after that he'd just logged. Oh well. Then I went to sleep completely forgetting that South Park thing was on.

Tonight I have a haircut appointment. Then I need to run (I didn't run yesterday). After that I plan to play but I'm not sure how late that will be.

[Hermie]

Got home late so by the time the kids were in bed and I organized the house and my stuff for today it was too late to play.

I did try and log in to check the boards but I was unable to connect. This is different from before where once a month I would loose the signal to the cable modem.

Cable company replaced the line, old one had a rusty splice buried in the yard, and it has worked since. Last night I had all the right lights illuminated and blinking but unable to connect to server. Tried again this morning and same problem. Need to call when I get home.

Today is the 10th anniversary for my wife and me. I sent flowers to her work today (it was a surprise) and she just called to say that they were beautiful and huge. She actually pulled out a tape measurer to see how tall the roses were (2').

I have already lined up a sitter for tomorrow and will cut out of work at 11 to surprise her with going out for lunch (she works part time so is done by then).

[Greebo]

Did we not have a daily for tuesday?

Ok, we're behind on the news. We said on Monday that Carol's arm was bitten by a slightly overly playful Rottweiler last Friday.

Monday afternoon her arm was looking worse - red all over the forearm and swollen. She went to the docs, who gave her some serious antibiotics and told her that if her arm didn't improve by tuesday, she'd have to be hospitalized for I.V. anti-biotics and possible surgery to clean the wound.

Good news, the antibiotics are working, her arm is much better, but she's on light duty for a few weeks. It will be a long, slow heal, but thank the gods there was no surgery required.

[Sir Rubi]

You've got it now!

You should go for it - start putting together some ideas. Between everyone here on the forums (not to mention, um, you know, the missus), you got plenty of tech support w/ the web side. :)

Hm! Now I'm going to have to give it some serious planning. I wrote it off a while back, but now... :smile:

[leng]

Did we not have a daily for tuesday?

Ok, we're behind on the news. We said on Monday that Carol's arm was bitten by a slightly overly playful Rottweiler last Friday.

Monday afternoon her arm was looking worse - red all over the forearm and swollen. She went to the docs, who gave her some serious antibiotics and told her that if her arm didn't improve by tuesday, she'd have to be hospitalized for I.V. anti-biotics and possible surgery to clean the wound.

Good news, the antibiotics are working, her arm is much better, but she's on light duty for a few weeks. It will be a long, slow heal, but thank the gods there was no surgery required. Yes, there was a Tuesday thread AND YOU POSTED IN IT.

Getting old, Greebo. Losing it ...

Glad to hear Carol is on the road to recovery, though

[Shiz]

PS was fun last night even though it was just me, Caratacus and Pidgie. There was a 3-way battle at Ixtab and one of the best tower fights ever. Pidgie and I put plasma to good use (but I had to stop after about 30 minutes due to 300 grief). I then pulled an AMS up close and wracked up 150 assists in short order. We took the tower eventually so I switched to some sniping and Lightning runs.

Just as I was considering logging for the night, a power surge from the storm caused a cold stop on my PC. Kris' was unaffected and mine has one of those $150 battery-backup protectors while hers has no protecter. What the hell did I pay for?

[Lycos]

I'm losing the "Make the 4 yr old take an afternoon nap" fight. Yesterday wasn't just zero for three, but the 3 yr old wouldn't nap either. It was an absolutel brilliant day so I took them out to the Park after lunch, brought them back (tired out, I had hoped) for tea, chilled a bit on PBSKids, then tried to put them to bed. Yah... right.

Watched Shark Tales, then dinged Rank 2 in DDO.

:lowlol: We lost that fight with Mikayla back in the Spring. The best you can hope for is to run them into the ground. Bring them back to something quiet, and hope they crash. Mikayla usually crashes in the chair watching Ben play his PS2 games. :D

[Lycos]

Hm! Now I'm going to have to give it some serious planning. I wrote it off a while back, but now... :smile:

One idea, was the other day, I was talking to Andrea, she worked hard putting together a nice gumbo, and then she asked how they liked it. And you get the yucky face or some other kind of comment like that. It makes it all worth while! I think every Mom runs into that! :lowlol:

[leng]

Just as I was considering logging for the night, a power surge from the storm caused a cold stop on my PC. Kris' was unaffected and mine has one of those $150 battery-backup protectors while hers has no protecter. What the hell did I pay for?

I assume you mean you have a UPS? The product stack we sell includes a couple of those things and I swear 40% of our service calls deal with problems with the UPSs and not the "real" product.

For a cheap home UPS it is probably a standby design, which means when the power fails it attempts to switch you to battery before the computer notices. Unfortunately, sometimes this switch is actually worse than the momentary glitch in the power. A good quality PC power unit can actually cope with quite a bit of abuse in the way of dirty supply but if the UPS is a bit slow the voltage drop will kill you. A line-interactive design, where power always comes from the batteries which are constantly charged from the mains, is cleaner (since there is no switching) and will solve other problems but will also cost more.

Given that modern file systems are significantly more resiliant than they once were, I am of the opinion that in 90% or more of cases UPSs for non-server class machines are probably a waste of time. By all means use a surge protected power cable - I have a six-way anti-surge extension lead which cost me all of $15 - but unless you live in a particularly poorly served neighbourhood I wouldn't bother with a UPS. If you do, then get a good one but bear in mind that even the best will not allow you to do much more than shut down cleanly in the event of an outage.

[Shiz]

I did forget to mention that the battery backup seemed to be drained. I hit the reset button and the "charging" light came on. It used to work better back when I first got it and I could go a good 2-3 minutes on the PC during a full blackout. Maybe the battery has gone bad.

[Caranthir]

One idea, was the other day, I was talking to Andrea, she worked hard putting together a nice gumbo, and then she asked how they liked it. And you get the yucky face or some other kind of comment like that. It makes it all worth while! I think every Mom runs into that! :lowlol:

Well, I'm not her Mom (obviously), but my niece pulled something similar that was pretty funny. I made myself a plate of nachos (just chips and cheese, nothing complicated) in the microwave one evening while she was there. I brought them into the living room to watch TV and asked her if she wanted some. That led to this exchange:

Her: "No, I HATE NACHOS!"
Me: "Wait, you like chips, don't you?"
Her: "Oh yeah, I LOOOOOOVE chips!"
Me: "You also really like cheese, don't you?"
Her: "Yeah, I LOOOOOVE cheese." (In case you can't tell, she's a bit of a ham.)
Me: "Well, nachos are chips covered with melted cheese."
Her: "Oh. <bit of a pause> You know what Uncle, I LOOOOOVE nachos!"

[DirkDarkBlade]

I hope Caylor gets better quickly. Sorry she's going through all this.

[Zyzzyx]

Started working on moving my /home directory to a separate partition (think "Documents and Settings" in Windows). Did something wrong, my settings weren't coming up right. Booted into terminal, copied stuff back, which should've reset everything, but it didn't. Decided that I really didn't have any files or such that I needed to keep, so fired up the Ubuntu Live CD for a reinstall. This time setting up the partitions a bit differently. Overall went much quicker this time around, having learned a bit over the last few weeks. That, and you learn more when things don't work as they should.

Took a break for dinner and watched X3, then back on the computer.

[Zyzzyx]

... but unless you live in a particularly poorly served neighbourhood I wouldn't bother with a UPS. If you do, then get a good one but bear in mind that even the best will not allow you to do much more than shut down cleanly in the event of an outage.
I've got a basic level APC UPS that I got back in '98 when I got a new system (P2-300, woo!) for school. On that original system it gave me ~15 minutes of battery runtime. Its been in continuous use on my primary system since then. And its seen its share of power blips as well. With it going, I've never had a power blip or loss affect my systems. While I don't have the monitors hooked up to it now, I am running my main and my server on it currently, and it still gives me ~10 minutes of battery time, easily covers the occasionaly 10sec or couple minute outage. I wouldn't want to run a computer without one.

[Sylvene]

Well, I'm not her Mom (obviously), but my niece pulled something similar that was pretty funny. I made myself a plate of nachos (just chips and cheese, nothing complicated) in the microwave one evening while she was there. I brought them into the living room to watch TV and asked her if she wanted some. That led to this exchange:

Her: "No, I HATE NACHOS!"
Me: "Wait, you like chips, don't you?"
Her: "Oh yeah, I LOOOOOOVE chips!"
Me: "You also really like cheese, don't you?"
Her: "Yeah, I LOOOOOVE cheese." (In case you can't tell, she's a bit of a ham.)
Me: "Well, nachos are chips covered with melted cheese."
Her: "Oh. <bit of a pause> You know what Uncle, I LOOOOOVE nachos!"

Haha! Sounds like my niece!

[DirkDarkBlade]

When my nephew was young we went to a Mexican rest. We ordered him a taco but he was acting up and really didn't want to eat. When we asked him why he wasn't eating he said.

"I don't like that, it tastes like owl."

I looked at him and asked when he'd ever eaten an owl.

[Andrea]

When my nephew was young we went to a Mexican rest. We ordered him a taco but he was acting up and really didn't want to eat. When we asked him why he wasn't eating he said.

"I don't like that, it tastes like owl."

I looked at him and asked when he'd ever eaten an owl.


:rotflmao: :rotflmao:

[Sylvene]

Yowtch... glad the antibiotics are working for Caylor. For future reference. Puncture wounds require Peroxide to clean. Stings like the bejeebus but gets the dirt and stuff out. That's assuming the Peroxide here is strong enough to actually fizz and bubble in a wound.

[leng]

I've got a basic level APC UPS that I got back in '98 when I got a new system (P2-300, woo!) for school. On that original system it gave me ~15 minutes of battery runtime. Its been in continuous use on my primary system since then. And its seen its share of power blips as well. With it going, I've never had a power blip or loss affect my systems. While I don't have the monitors hooked up to it now, I am running my main and my server on it currently, and it still gives me ~10 minutes of battery time, easily covers the occasionaly 10sec or couple minute outage. I wouldn't want to run a computer without one.
Monitors tend to run down UPSs pretty quickly, hence my comments about non-server applications. To be honest, I am also somewhat biased by the fact that power supplies over here are generally significantly more reliable than in the US. Short power outages/blips are almost unknown and I think in the 17 years I've lived where I am now we have had perhaps 3 outages where something significant took out a substation or a main feed and we lost power for a couple of hours.

However, one of the problems with standby UPSs is that the battery can go flat without warning (seems to be what happened to Shiz). I suspect that the APC unit you are using is probably significantly higher powered than Shiz's unit and may be line-interactive as they do not suffer from the flat-battery issue in the same way. We spec our product APCs to give 2 clean shutdowns (which involves writing about 8Gb to disk for each shutdown) and the software interlock prevents the system from even starting if there is not enough charge in the UPS for one shutdown, all of which is a bit paranoid for home use but the general principle of not running a computer with a discarged UPS is sound ... after all, if it is safe to run it discharged you don't need it in the first place.

[Hiken]

DNP, worked on my final project and studied for my exam. Can't wait till this class is over. Caught LOST and the WoW South Park, the first being extremely interesting (but a tad disappointing) and the later being frickin awesome. Also had the DVR record The Nine, but haven't watched it yet.

[Greebo]

Yowtch... glad the antibiotics are working for Caylor. For future reference. Puncture wounds require Peroxide to clean. Stings like the bejeebus but gets the dirt and stuff out. That's assuming the Peroxide here is strong enough to actually fizz and bubble in a wound. Did that, got the fizzy bubbles, didn't do the trick. :(

Later we used both that and alcohol, but it was already too late.

Bottom line, any animal bite no matter how small it looks, if it punctures the skin fully (ie: not just a surface scratch) should get checked immediately.

[leng]

Did that, got the fizzy bubbles, didn't do the trick. :(

Later we used both that and alcohol, but it was already too late.

Bottom line, any animal bite no matter how small it looks, if it punctures the skin fully (ie: not just a surface scratch) should get checked immediately.
I told ya, you forgot the red-hot irons.

[Sylvene]

Bottom line, any animal bite no matter how small it looks, if it punctures the skin fully (ie: not just a surface scratch) should get checked immediately.

/nod

You are absolutely right. I was thinking of dirt & stuff when I wrote that. Fell on a gravel path once and got the peroxide treatment.

[Aananla]

Sorry I'm late... CONGRATS KATY! Very nice Strip Rubi! :rotflmao: