Busted: Apple

I've never liked Apples corporate attitude; so I probably enjoyed this article way too much... Macbook Owner With Defective GPU Beats Apple In Court For all of you who haven't heard from me in a while. Hi! There is a LAN party on the Saturday the 28th if you are in the SLC area and interested.

Server - Reinstall!

So I've settled on XFS for the RAID array. It's got some sweet features, and deals well with parallel or highly threaded workloads! But it has some strange quirks (disadvantages?). For maximum performance the journal has to be stored separately from the RAID array, preferably on a device that can handle huge IOPS. Secondly the disk check utility requires ginormous amounts of ram to run, and takes forever! So my little, limping, SSD is going to become primarily a swap space, and journal space device. I hope I have enough room to cram the OS on their too...

Server - Success!

Amazing! - Imagine four G34 socket processors on one motherboard, or just click here.   You could put 16-core CPU's in for a total of 64 2.2Ghz AMD64 cores on one motherboard.  That's like having 16 quad core computers in one box.

My server is far more modest.  I'm rocking a Motherboard/CPU that I picked up at the University Surplus store for $5. (Previously an old Dell Dimension 9100 I got from a friend, but it's BTX motherboard won't fit the new case.) A case I bartered some three way switching expertise for. An old SSD that is failing (144kB went bad on one of the memory chips, or so my operating system says.  I think that the smart data might be being misinterpreted).  An open box RAID card that I snagged off of Newegg.  And some hard drives that I bought pre-flood quite cheaply. 

Here are a few pictures before and after I got the new case (The red one is my gaming rig...)

Our One Demand

Our One Demand

I concur.  Do you concur doctor?

Adventure Games

Oh no.  People are giving Tim Schafer, and a bunch of adventure game creators, including Ron Gilbert; a huge pile of money!  This is IMHO a bad thing; let me explain:

The very first game I ever owned, that I didn't have to program myself was Wishbringer.  It was a beautiful game, it came with this little quartz rock (the wishbringer..) and a booklet printed on some kind of fancy paper.  I loved that game, I couldn't even figure out how to deliver the letter to the Magic Shop; I got absolutely nowhere!!  

When my dad got a PC, I got Rise of The Dragon.  I completely failed to complete that game.  I'm proud to say that I think I did figure out how to get the main character killed.  It's progress of a sort.

Then came, Day of the Tentacle.  I don't quite remember how I came to play this game.  I think my friends were all playing it and having a grand old time; so I gave a whack at it.  The third time was the charm; I learned an important lesson - I suck at adventure games; and therefore kind of hate them. 

So; now there is going to be this big blockbuster release of a modern adventure game; created by the masters of adventure game making.  My friends will all play it, and they will get reminisce over all the inside jokes while sharing tips and tricks on how to complete it.  While I, left out in the cold; stew in my hatred.   -   It's going to be Monkey Island all over again.  -  Ba! 

Bus dodging

http://www.penny-arcade.com/resources/just-wow1.html

I don't for one minute believe the spin that this N-controller company is putting out.  The whole debacle stinks of a publicity stunt.  I implore my gaming brethren to take this all the way.   Our fury shouldn't be personal.  Paul Christoforo deserves scorn, but he's human; he deserves to learn from this and move on (at least to his next lesson, he doesn't seem to learn very fast.) However the company that paid him isn't a person; it deserves our untempered wrath.  Don't accept the premise that this is about Moisès Chiullan throwing Paul under a bus. I care about that less than I care about the details of there shipping problems.
THIS IS ABOUT GAMERS REFUSING TO BE BULLIED.
This is us throwing them under the bus.

Root of all evil

I've gotten some very nice presents for my birthday so far, and it's not even quite here yet (December 14, 1979 - Wednesday).

Thanks Dad and Chris for the Settlers of Cattan book, and the Chukar Cherries.  We're already half way through the Cherries and I hope to start the book tonight.  My Mom actually came out to visit and she took Gretchen and I out to a very fancy Italian resturant.

These gifts have gotten me thinking about money and I just spent about an hour reading about the national debt.  I finished reading even more confused than when I started.

I'm very concerned that all of the information out there has been tainted one way or another by political motivations; for example:  When Scott Walker was elected in Wisconsin, he met with his allies and asked them to get him as much financial leverage as they could.  He, and his allies, then used that leverage to great effect to push through legislation that was related to finances, but motivated by his, and his supporters ideology.  Threating the finances of a state to promote an ideology is treasonous.  -  Proving his motivations to get him sent to jail would be, probably impossible; and probably not deserved - I'm sure he felt he was doing the right thing; I just don't like the way he did it.  Means don't justify the ends and all that.

The national debt is certainly a serious problem, but with so many political and wealthy people recklessly crusading, and using unbridled demagoguery, figuring out what information I can trust is quite difficult.

I think I need a stronger historical knowledge of countries, and their debts to properly frame this issue.