Further Assimilations

Due to the red tape of services transfer, I will not have Internet at the house tonight or tomorrow. Not the end of the world, but nevertheless an annoyance.

Also in the FAIL department: instead of the nap I'd intended, I spent 30 minutes finding the old TeeFive character sheet, another 60 locating and installing the legacy software on an emulated OS 9 machine to open said sheet, and then another 30 looking for and failing to find the ACTUAL document, which I'm beginning to fear I no longer have.

Feh.

Hmph. The Microsoft Office 2008 icons are kinda ugly.

Listening to some Vangelis music at work this morning. "Alpha" is one of those tunes that sends tingles up my spine when I listen to it, and awakes wonder and potential in my mind. If only I could stay in that headspace for days at a time... it probably wouldn't be good for me, but I feel that I'd get a lot done while I could stand it.

I wonder where the 'tingles' come from? It's absolutely a physical sensation to me, but I have no idea what produces it.

Far more importantly, my mom is walking now without human assistance. She's still using a walker or crutch, but given that she couldn't even move the leg two weeks ago, this is an absolutely awesome development, and I joked that she's making far better progress than I did. If any of my friends have ever wondered where my buried stubborn streak came from, this may provide a clue. I am thrilled for her - and while she's there, they think they may be able to correct a nerve issue that's pained her for about 20 years, so, silver lining!

And speaking of doctors, it took me a visit to Wikipedia to learn that the awfully-familiar looking archaeologist on Doctor Who this week was Dr. Corday on ER for seven seasons. Cool.

Sometimes, people post things on the Internet that just plain make me feel glad to be living in a world where someone spent the time to make them up.

The "Lions In Kenya" and "Shirley Bassey Getting the Party Started" videos are two examples. Here's another:



I successfully stayed up all night on Saturday night. We decided that our level 56-ers needed to hit 58 This Weekend, which we reached about 6 am. It was nice to know that I can still do that... a year of 10pm bedtimes had left me doubtful. Still, I had to down several Tums, as one of the tricks my body uses to try to get me to go to bed is surges of stomach acid. Also, I was kind of out of it the next day; so, I've learned from this that I can do it, but not easily.

Found a website that generates an automatically updated stat block I can use for my characters, like so...



Too bad that the servers are now far too overloaded with requests to actually function properly. (This one won't update, it's static.)

Local TV re-ran the Special Edition "Trouble With Tribbles" this weekend, so last night I dug out the "Trials And Tribble-ations" DS9 episode for Starr, who'd never seen it. Great fun! And then it hit me... there's no way in heck that J.J. Abrams' Lt. Uhura will be running around in that red minidress. Not in a 2008 feature film. I weep.

This is one of the niftiest uses of Second Life I have yet seen.



Using (time-delayed) FAA data, a company has constructed an (almost) real-time model of the airspace over LAX airport.

That's just keen. I'd love to see a BattleTech game played in a similar manner.

A little timeline here (without many dates, cause I can't remember them):

2005: Apple announces it will be moving the Macintosh over to Intel-based motherboards. Geeks all over the place ask if they can run Windows on them too: Apple says it won't intentionally block the ability, but won't support it either.
Later 2005: We discover that Intel Macs don't use a BIOS to start up their operating system, but something called EFI. Since all versions of Windows use a BIOS, this is a terrible incompatibility, making Windows on a Mac seem unlikely.
2006: Apple releases Intel Macs.
March 2006: Hackers are able to cajole, trick, and otherwise force Windows XP to boot without a BIOS. It doesn't run great, but it runs. Other excited hackers start working on the "runs great" part.
April 2006: Apple, seeing that it's about to run out of time on its little 10.5 surprise, says, "oh okay, we were gonna wait 'til later, but look. Here's Boot Camp. Go ahead and install Windows. It's beta software, so don't expect much." It runs great.

One machine that runs OS X, XP, Linux, BSD, and/or a half-dozen other OSes on command? I'm suddenly a little more interested in a shiny-new Intel Mac...

It's quite trying to have to find 15-year-old install floppies so one can access archived stuff in an obsolete format. (And find a floppy drive while I'm at it.)

I should just thank Eris that the old software even runs. I need one of those Federation tricorders that can access 1000-year-old alien logs in 20-30 seconds of thinking.

Ocean's Twelve had some really funny parts, but it wasn't really a good caper movie. It's so busy being cute and inscrutable that the we give up on the plot too long before the Big Twists are revealed. Still worth a ticket for the good bits, but don't expect the coolness of the first one.

Continued musings on the plight of the superhero: if you have a Code Against Killing, but the serial-murdering super-villain you've just captured laughs at you and tells you he'll be back on the street killing people in 6 months - and you know he's right - what do you do? Break your code and make sure the villain can't hurt anyone else ever? Or follow your code, knowing that the likelihood is that people will die for your choice?

Morning linkage: This is a keen Smithsonian webpage that allows you to sit in the cockpit of several aircraft, from a Spad to a Mercury capsule, using QuickTimeVR.

Saw the last of the Vulcan arc of Enterprise this weekend - it did not disappoint. As usual, a few quibbles - I'd have like to have gotten farther in the head of the main bad guy, and another character did something stupid for an excruciatingly long time before stopping and admitting he should have known better - but plenty of good stuff. Trip is growing up fast, and it's great to watch; and the sehlat exchange was classic Vulcan dry humor. "You keep a pet - Porthos." "Porthos doesn't try to eat me if I'm late with dinner." "Vulcan children are never late with dinner." I'm back to being a regular watcher, I think.

I've had a cold or a bug or something for days. Sore throat and stomach issues all week, then weakness Friday and Saturday, and Boom! - Sunday was Drainage and Constant Sneezing Day. This morning, it's nearly all gone away - I am thankful.

Yes, Virginia, you can fit a futon, mattress and all, in a Hyundai Elantra.

Spent my first night in the new house. The room I've slept in for the past three months had crappy A/C, but this morning I woke up a bit chilly - raininva will be pleased. Glad I found my bathrobe in the move. This week I start unpacking what I have with me of my office, which is little more than a mess of boxes at the moment. The commute is easier (it seems so far) than the previous commute, which is nice. I have to find out why the smoke alarm emits random stifled beeps all day, but last night I was far too tired to notice.

Had the sense to take some ibuprofen before bed, so didn't wake up too sore.

So, it seems a Mac shareware developer released an app which, if you enter a pirated serial number, erases your Home directory - your system and applications survive, but every personal document, music file, movie, e-mail, website, password, etc. is GONE. So, is this just desserts for pirates, or equivalent to burning someone's house down for punching you in the nose? Discuss.

Here's a website that brings back some old Mac gaming memories.

http://mac.the-underdogs.org/

Warning: you might need an emulator to run some of thse titles. Even a newer Mac may need to emulate an older one.

Junkyard Geek got his old Umax SCSI scanner to work on his G4 tonight - a desktop machine that doesn't approve of third-party SCSI cards, and certainly doesn't want to talk to obsolete Umax stuff. Luckily, other hackers insist on writing *nix drivers for their obsolete hardware, and some among them are amused by tweaking said drivers to work on Panther (with a little fiddling).

Thanks very much to those who contributed to Rain's early birthday present. She got an almost unwilling smile on her face, saying, "how dare our friends make my day like that!" Good job, guys :)

It was an odd feeling leaving work early on a Tuesday, This may be the first time in 5 years that I arrived home from a Tuesday session while the sun still shone. I'm gonna miss some of my co-workers; at least I know I'll still get to catch up with VTSFFC and Starfleet folks from time to time.