it hurts to watch

I'm watching some of the NBA finals game, and I'm remembering how much basketball sucks to watch. Basketball is an OK game at heart, but then layer on all kinds of bullshit rules, the inane commentators and the constant barrage of advertising and it becomes awful. I like basketball plain and simple. For example, in NBA Street for PS2 there is one rule: shot clock. And you can turn it off if you want. In real life the players are always trying to get fouled, and the stupid rules help them by making it a foul to block in a certain way or otherwise be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's even worse at the end of the game when the strategy of the defense becomes to foul as quickly as possible. Then the commentators ramble on about something incredibly stupid while the TV network crams beer ads between free throws, and the whole experience gets to be unbearably ridiculous. So I am going to cheer on the Pistons, but in a way that involves me not watching more than the last few minutes of the fourth quarter because any more and I start throwing a fit about how stupid the game is.

And yet, basketball is still more fun to watch than baseball. Football is about the only sport I can tolerate watching. I gave up on watching the game so I am getting Windows XP installed on Riemann. I think I'm going to get Riemann to a good state of installed-ness, do another Sudoku puzzle and go to bed.

The picture I posted earlier today is of a Pontiac Solstice, a little roadster that is still in development. A few are in GM's captive fleet, and my dad got loaned one for the weekend by one of his work buddies.

another quiet day

Not much going on today either...I went through all the archives of the webcomic Ctrl-Alt-Del, I finished beating Ace Combat 4 for the 10th time, I did a Sudoku that was pretty hard, I got some stuff in the mail. My hard drive enclosure shipped and it should be here for my birthday. I think I'm going to start working on Riemann tonight so I can sell it, but I'm going to go chill in the hot tub first. The first Pistons-Spurs game is tonight too, so I'll probably support the Pistons and watch part of that.

It was hot and humid out today, but we have the A/C on. I wish we had a solar power system so we could run it with impunity, and I could laugh at the sun and be like 'The harder you beat down on this house, the more power you give us for air conditioning!' Or something like that. While I'm wishing, I wish I had a Prius. Maybe someday.

I've had the laptop for about a week now. It's going so well I haven't turned on my desktop in days. I was a little skeptical of the widescreen format, but I pulled a quick 180 on that one. I can fit more columns of data into programs like Excel and iTunes, and AIM doesn't get as much in the way anymore because I can push it further to the right. Overall I am very pleased. Between rebates, the garage sale and selling my desktop I will probably make back 2/3 of the cost of the machine, so it didn't hurt my wallet too much in the end.

pontiac solstice

this car is still in beta, not many of them yet

kicking back

I didn't do much today, spent a good part of the afternoon listening to music and doing Sudoku puzzles. I got tired of my wimpy laptop speakers, so I broke out my Monsoons. No one else was home at that point so I cranked them up.

I'm going to try to get a couple things done before I go to bed though. I still have to get my laptop rebates in the mail, and I have some more thank-you cards to write. I should pick up my room a bit too, it's starting to get bad.

meet freeman

adapt or die

I'm already starting to get low free space on Freeman even with its 80GB hard drive, so I've been looking into getting some kind of adaptor for my 120GB internal hard drive on Riemann. I knew there was some kind of cable available, but I've also found that you can get actual enclosures for the drive so it's protected and looks nicer. Newegg.com has a whole section devoted to these devices, so I am getting a good feel for what is available. I'm happy enough with my new laptop that I'm probably going to sell off my desktop after I pull its main hard drive.

I took care of a lot of errands today and also did nice things like doing the dishes and mowing the lawn, so I'm just kicking back now. I played SimCity 4 today, with a little Ace Combat 4 on the side to mix things up. I'm pretty good with SimCity now, so I was designing weird cities to see how they'd work. One was in the crater of a volcano, another was split up into five tiny islands. It's fun to take the odd geography and adapt to it. I tried to build a village in the ruins of a metropolis but that didn't go so well.

Epilogue: I bought a hard drive enclosure for $37. It's coming super-slow because I didn't spring for pricey shipping, but I don't need it right away. Not a bad price for 120 extra gigs though.

another experiment

I figured out how to use Yahoo! to post photo albums. It's actually easier than I expected, so I think I'll be happy with it. I only have two albums up right now, but I will post more later.

I didn't do too much on Monday. Played some SimCity 4, beat Ratchet & Clank 3 again, watched the Pistons game. I've got stuff to do today, but I need to get some sleep first.

shakedown phase

Well, I think I've got most of the core stuff set up on Freeman, so now it's time to put it through the paces by installing games. I think I'm going to warm up with some SimCity 4 and then really test this thing by installing Half-Life 2 tomorrow. While this is going on, I'm also doing 24-hour endurance runs in Gran Turismo 4. I can multitask my gaming!

Freeman was running hot when I was chilling on the deck, so I found some software that actually throttles the CPU to what's needed. Hopefully that will cool things down a bit. Overall, I am very happy with the new laptop so far.

prius

a pirate's life for me pt. II

I'm posting this update outside on my deck. Wireless networking is pretty darn convenient. Not just because I can steal it - I like my new ability to wander around the house and still be connected. I can also be online without having to worry about someone else wanting to get online (like stupid AOL, only allows one person to sign on at a time).