to whom speed means freedom of his soul

For as much as I profess to love cars I really have no interest in motorsport. The epic battle of the C6.R vs the DBR9 is pretty much visible only to the Europeans, and rallying is so dragged out it would be impossible to follow when the events are. NASCAR I just find appalling. My only real fondness for the sport was when I found myself in a restaurant in Government Camp watching a Pontiac GXP.R mix it up with some 911s at Laguna Seca. Unfortunately I don't really know what series that is or when it runs, and I still don't have TV anyway.

I finally decided to board the geek train after everyone else and watch the first season of Battlestar Galactica. Unfortunately I watched half of the first episode at 2AM when I was knocked on my ass by a head cold - that really messed me up for the day. The series started off well enough, if depressing - I had no idea of the premise of the show - but it already seems to be dragging down into the same formula. Oh look, they are running out of another critical resource. Another dozen Vipers out of their ostensibly finite supply get blown up to acquire it. And then Baltar gets caught in a wacky awkward position because he has a Cylon in his head. I looked at some later season spoilers and it sounds like some serious retconning happens as well. I don't know if I'm going to pursue this past the first season.

flood warning

Some undesired excitement this evening - my ceiling began dripping. Which is very peculiar because I don't live on the top floor. I went to harass the apartment above and it turns out their toilet tank exploded. The water got above my bathroom and also above my bedroom, where it started dripping onto the carpet. I got a maintenance guy to come around 9 PM, who tried sucking up some of the carpet water and then tore up the carpet to wedge a fan underneath. More excitement tomorrow as they come to patch things up.

adventures in upgrading

I finally decided to upgrade from Office 2000. I considered the possibility of buying Office legit, until I saw the $500 price tage for the standalone version. So it's back to piracy then. I got a copy of Office 2007, but it had slipped my mind that Microsoft got the bright idea of changing everything that isn't broken. So I've now acquired a copy of Office 2003, which I use and tolerate at work, as it should be a happy compromise between obsolescent and newfangled. This also gives me access to Access, which should help me with various geeky databasing projects.

I also got my GPS and printer working on Gauss; pretty much the only thing left to change over is the pain of letting iTunes wipe my iPod and resync everything fresh.

superleggera

I saw this Gallardo Superleggera this morning, and was fortunately stuck at the light long enough to pull out my cell phone and take this crappy picture. Getting the picture transferred was another matter, as Verizon forbids it...fortunately I finally had some luck with the hack software. Bite me, Verizon.

On top of that, the Swiss suppliers visiting at work brought Toblerones (probably from the airport), we had Olive Garden catered for lunch, and it was payday. I think I'm going to suffer for everything tomorrow.

grown up in slow motion

I have been reading The Codebreakers, a huge tome on cryptology. I'm still in the old-timey stuff, although there are a couple ideas I haven't heard of before for the basic substitutions. I just got through the general solution to polyalphabetic ciphers, which was interesting.

Now that Gauss is up and running, I installed a couple games that Freeman really stuggled with and Gauss blows them away. That's what I was hoping for.

I've had the radar detector for over a month now. So far it has been totally useless. 99% of what I pick up has been grocery stores, and the two radar signs I've run across caught me off guard. If anything I have been driving more restrained because of the thing - I don't trust it and don't want to be caught off guard, whereas before I was blissfully unaware.

The weather here is back to cool and rainy - so much for the springtime euphoria.

a sense of function but a disregard

I guess it was a crappy week but it doesn't matter at all now because I'm not at work today, the new computer is working perfectly and the weather is beautiful.

i pray the wrecking ball is waning

I finally got Gauss to work. All it took was a mutant XP install disc combining my original XP CD, Service Pack 2 and some extra SATA drivers.

but our ship's not coming back

Gauss has turned into the worst project in the world. Let's review the disasters to date:

Intel are assholes and sit around not releasing the new 45nm CPUs, causing an eight month delay in the start of the project. When project starts, the desired case has gone out of production and has to be special ordered from Buy.com. Buy.com fails and does not actually have the case. Case has to be ordered again from Frys.com.

On the big day of assembly, motherboard turns out to be DOA. Motherboard is RMA'd to Newegg.com, who has run out of that type of motherboard. Have to go to Fry's and buy some other random motherboard. New motherboard works, but Windows XP does not recognize SATA drives.

Got internal floppy drive to hold SATA drivers. Windows XP setup says press F6 to load drivers but does not load USB keyboard drivers until after that. Rummaged up USB-PS/2 converter. Still cannot press F6. Got into menu. $28 floppy drive does not work. Tried flipping the power. $28 floppy drive fried.

XP setup also will not recognize more than 128GB of SATA drives. The solution is apparently an SP2 CD, which I do not have, and requires something called slipstreaming to merge an XP install disk with SP2.

I am never building a computer again.

a place out by the sun

More Camaro spy shots this morning, notably at the Nurburgring sporting red Brembo brake calipers - presumably the SS is undergoing some hardcore track testing. Apparently the Genesis coupe will also have Brembo brakes, but they are so big they will only fit on the 19" wheels and not the standard 18".

In other car news, there is a new BMW M3 ad out showing a combustion cycle with no CGI - it's pretty cool in itself, but I also really like the music. Unfortunately I think the ad is brand new so nobody has music info - if it isn't custom. The Genesis coupe's website also has music I really like but can't find.

every color goes where you do

My DOA motherboard just made it to Newegg on Friday, so I probably won't see a new one until next weekend.

I saw a new XJR convertible today. That's the first interesting thing I've spotted in a while, although I did see a Delorean at the grocery store a while ago. I would upload the picture I took, but it's on my unhacked Razr so I am still under Verizon's tyranny.

I was hoping to burn some new MP3 CDs for the Malibu today, but I never got around to it. I don't know how to fix my playlists so I always just stick with the same ones.