Hmm. Who could it be corrupting our nation's youth though evil evil comic books? Who would write such horrible loathsome things...? Hmm... let's see, could it be, hmm, I don't know...



On a side note, mightn't a daughter of Satan have a cooler name than Patsy? I mean, I work with a really nice lady named Patsy but the name is not daughter-of-satan material. She should have a name like "Hell-vira" or "Devilisa" or "Legioness" or "Karen". Really almost anything is better than Patsy. But at least by pure coincidence she became The Hellcat.

(Of course I haven't finished the comic yet, she might not actually end up being a daughter of Satan...)

*edit* - Apperently she's only his daughter in the metaphysical sense... or something. It was eh, a little fuzzy on the details.

Matt on 05.26.05 @ 06:31 PM PST [link] 

So, I've finally got my system back up and running. It was a trickier install than usual (for some reason 2k choked on my cdrom drive until I installed SP4... which is weird..) but I think I've got everything almost back to the way it was before the crash, which is nice. In the meantime though, I had a great time running Linux. I kinda wish that I could run it all the time, but there's too much stuff I need to run for work that's Windows specific. And of course there's the fact that I'm a gamer, and you can't do much gaming in Linux (a few of the huge-name titles getting eventual ports, or else Cedega with its fees/lack of compatiblity thing isn't really acceptable). Actually it's funny, I use dos for quite few tasks on my system and now my fingers keep wanting to type 'ls' instead of 'dir' whenever I go to the command line.

Anyway, it was enough fun that I'm vaguely thinking of building a Linux box. But then again, aren't we all? Although my brother-in-law Ed wants me to help him out with this software project he's working on Linux (despite the fact that I'm a terrible coder, which should make sense seeing as I was an English major as opposed to comp-sci, though I guess I did technically work as a web applications developer for a year...) so who knows, maybe I'll put one together after all.

Anyway, that's about all that's going on tonight other than my first NWN session in days. Which was fun except that I kept getting this glitch that wouldn't let me access my inventory basically every time I was in the middle of a fight with some boss-type monster and got me killed way too many times. Although I did take out the Maker which was a pretty intense battle (for anyone who stumbles across this on Google looking for tips to beat the Maker from HotU - four words: Black Blade of Despair. you're welcome - assuming you have a spellcaster or someone who can read scrolls that is).

Alright, I've discussed Linux, gaming, and D&D. Nerd quota... FILLED!

Matt on 05.26.05 @ 01:21 AM PST [link] 

Well, it turns out it was a hard drive based problem after all, despite what Powermax said. At least it certainly looks that way, since while reinstalling Windows there was a loud "ka-chunk" noise from the C drive when it tried to install the disk driver. After that the computer crashed and I got in another one of those wonderful Inaccessible Boot Device errors when I restarted. So I don't actually know what that means other than the likelyhood of some kind of unspecified hard drive problem. But that drive was at least 3-4 years old so it stands to figure that it might be having problems. So a new 160gb SATA Maxtor is on the way, but it probably won't get here until monday or tuesday of next week.

In the meantime I at least came up with the idea of running Knoppix so I can surf the web and watch movies on the big screen over the weekend. Which is something I guess. Plus that means I'm momentarily running Linux, which is probably 1337 or something. Perhaps I am a 1337 h4x0r? Anyway, that's the only thing I can think to report at the moment. Updates as they occur! Can you handle this excitment? (Note: Nick came down for a brief visit and so I am heavily inebriated at the moment. He tends to inspire that in me.)



Matt on 05.20.05 @ 02:37 AM PST [link] 

I think that someone, somewhere is trying to keep my off of my computer. My desktop that is, my laptop is doing fine so far. Last night I was just about to get settled in for a fine bit of computerized entertainment... of what type you ask? why the possiblities were practically unlimitless... when to my great joy the massive windstorm outside appearently knocked over a telephone pole or something somewhere and that was it. No fine computerized entertainment for me. Especially lucky was the fact that pretty much all my portable electronic devices did not have charged batteries. The power eventually came back on, about 15 minutes after I fell asleep I think it was. But that, that was nothing compared to tonight.

Do the words "corrupted system hive" have any partictular meaning to any of you? If you've never heard this phrase you are a lucky lucky individual. What it means, you see, is that your windows system registry is basically no more. This is, in my opinion, worse than a hard drive crash because basically your whole system and everything is there and should be running fine, but it's not. It's dead. So with a hard drive crash at least you know everything's gone and you're gonna have to reinstall and run some recovery software to salvage what you can from the dead drive, but with this I absolutely *have* to try to fix it. I can't just give up on the installation since it's such an enormous pain to try to reinstall everything.

So I restored the last registry backup which was from... erk... January, only to have it come up with one of my very favorite boot errors: Inaccessible Boot Device. This means that Windows can't find a driver for something so it's just not gonna start. Which strikes me as really stupid. I mean, I'm not an OS programmer but you'd think that they could make it so if the registry can't find something, it just skips it. But perhaps that's just naïveté on my part. So I'm following the M$ proposed fix... you have to install a second copy of Windows, run regedit on the broken hive, figure out what's not loading right and disable it. Had I been easygoing enough to just say "Eh, I'll reinstall" some 5 hours ago, I'd probably have pretty much everything back up and running at this point. Which is probably what I should just do now, since I'll have at least 4 months of stuff to reinstall anyway.

Alright, well, my parallel installation is almost done so I'll stop venting for the moment. Hopefully my next post will come from happier computer-climes.

Matt on 05.18.05 @ 10:41 PM PST [link] 

Well, it's another Sunday, and once again I can't really get into it due to the looming spectre of the new week starting off tomorrow. So it might be appearent that I've finally fallen off the writing wagon. Not that I'm not writing at all, I just couldn't really keep up the every day thing. I'm still writing more days than not though, so I'll consider that a small success. Still I had it going for a couple months so that's not too shabby. But as with all things of that sort, apathy sets in and the like; you know how it goes.

So not too much has been happening around these parts. Lynnea's been sick for the past week with some kind of flu or really bad cold or something, which means I've been doing more housework and the like than usual. I actually made dinner something like four times last week which wasn't too unpleasant. Even though I wouldn't really want to do it every day or anything, I do enjoy cooking, and I even mangaged to put together some really good chicken katsu and miso soup last night.

In other news, I've gone back to Neverwinter Nights again. I figured that I should take on Hordes of the Underdark before too much more new stuff with snazzier graphics came along to distract me. It started off a little slow but it seems to picking up the pace a little bit now that I'm out of Undermountain. Other than that all I've done this weekend is find a couple $6 Tragically Hip cds at an incredibly crappy cd sale (really I mean, aside from the Hip they had not a single cd I have ever even heard of). It's kinda funny how the Hip are practically gods in Canada, but virtually unknown in the US. I wonder if that has anything to do with two of the band members being named Gordon. It seems likely.

Anyway, I can't think of much else to talk about, but let me end with a special message to all those people whose blogs I read: Post something, will ya? I'm getting sick of seeing the same thing whenever I go to your site.

I'm sure you know the feeling.


Matt on 05.15.05 @ 09:02 PM PST [link] 

So, it look like I managed to fix the blog this morning (ok, I guess it's almost one in the afternoon, but that counts for morning when you haven't been up that long). The way I fixed it made no sense, but then again neither did the way broke. So I'm posting right now to see if this breaks it again, which I'm fully expecting. It's annoying when you're really good at html, but you have to run it through odd blogging software that makes things occasionally explode. (Don't get me wrong, Graymatter is pretty slick, other than the whole explosion thing.)

*edit*
Hmm... ok well, it's still working I guess.
On a side note this seems to be my 100th post. Yay, 100th post.
One would normally expect a a bit more excitement for a 100th post... aw, what the heck...


Matt on 05.07.05 @ 12:45 PM PST [link] 

So, I just got home a little bit ago from going to see Kung Fu Hustle. And you know, I'm not entirely sure that I can't say that it wasn't the best movie ever. Ok, maybe that's being a little hyperbolic, but really I don't think that a minute of that movie went by that I wasn't laughing or at least smiling alot, and that says something, coming from jade ball of cynicism that is me (hmm, that sounds like a D&D artifact. "You can do little to stop me Aelfius Riverwine, for I hold in my hands The Jade Ball of Cynicism!"). And Lynnea loved it too - we've both been breaking out into occasional bits of recollective laughter since we got out. For those that have seen it... man, that scene with the knives nearly killed me.

The other useful bit of information I've come across today is this really cool program made by NASA called World Wind. What it does is it's basically a 3D rendering of the earth (complete with place names down the level of creeks and canyons and whatnot) that you can rotate and zoom on it at which point the program accesses satellite imaging data and syncs it with what you're looking at. Admittedly the resolution isn't that high, except for a few cities which have been mapped by the USGS Urban Area Ortho satellite (I found Amoeba in SF without much trouble), Google Satellite is probably sharper, but this has the whole world. And it's free, just a quick 180meg download. Anyway, I think it's spiffy. And who knows, in a few years it might be just like the Earth program from Snow Crash. It's already pretty close...

Meanwhile, my blog seems to have inexplicably exploded after making this post and all I can seem to do is make it slightly better for now. I'll try to fix it tomorrow...

Matt on 05.07.05 @ 12:46 AM PST [link] 

So I'm sitting here today, right, doing my work and all that when my cell phone rings. Which usually means a call from work which often means that someone is calling because they're concerned enough about something that a mere email will not suffice. So I alacritically grab my phone and pop it open. But the call's not from work, it's a local number, which is odd since there's only like one person around here who might call me and he's in my address book. I pick the phone...

"Hello?"

"Hey Tom! This is Don. I was just talking to the builders here and they said that we gotta get-"

I cut him off. "Um, hey, sorry I think you got the wrong number."

"Oh. Well... this is Don.", he says, seemingly confident in the knowledge that if he knows who he is then I must. "The builders said we gotta get all them windows up there in that building closed before we can pour the concrete, so I need ya to do that."

"No, dude, really. You've got the wrong number. This is not Tom, this is Matt. I have no idea who you are or what you're talking about."

And then comes classic part: "Yeah, whatever. Look, we really gotta get those windows closed in that building up there. Can you do that for me?"

"Um. Yeah. Ok, sure. I'll get right on that."

"Alright, good."

-click-

Matt on 05.05.05 @ 05:53 PM PST [link] 

Huh, I didn't realize that I hadn't posted in so long. So I actually did get better and don't have the whooping cough after all, though I wasn't really entirely back to normal until Friday. Anyway this weekend was my niece Emily's birthday so the whole family (Lynnea and I and my parents and grandma, plus my sister Sarah flew up for the weekend) headed up to Eugene on Friday to spend the weekend up there. Which was fun until we went over to Florence on Saturday and while we were wandering around on the beach somebody smashed in my dad's car window and stole Sarah's bag which had her journal and badge and some money and a bunch of other stuff in it. Which was just incredibly weak and lousy. And my laptop was in the car too but they didn't take it for some reason that I can't really fathom (they'd obviously looked in the bag). Which is a really good thing considering that it's basically irreplaceable (I mean, technically it's replaceable, but it'll be a really long time before I have that much spare cash on hand). But yeah, criminals like that just really suck. I mean they got away with maybe $100 but managed to ruin our entire day. I guess there's always the consolation that they'll most likely spend the money on meth, which is very bad for them, but seriously... meh. (On a side note why is this type of crime referred to as "car clout"...? it's not as though that meaning of the word "clout" is used anywhere else in the entirity of the english language... "Mom! Billy's clouting me!" just sounds a little weird, no?)

But anyway, other than the thoroughly unpleasant and unnecessary spectre of crime looming over the weekend, I guess it wasn't a bad trip. We got to go by Borders and Trader Joe's today on the way out of town and Borders happily had the matching edition of The Subtle Knife by Phillip Pullman. I read The Golden Compass a couple weeks ago and I've been looking for the second one in trade (I already have the third) since then. Children's book or no (and I do enjoy children's books from time to time) that's a seriously good read. A vertible page-turner if you will. But anyway it was a short trip but it's always nice getting back home. So I think for now I'm going to just sit here and Be Home for a little while.

Matt on 05.01.05 @ 06:34 PM PST [link]