Off By One

The annual Jefferson Muzzle awards for 2005 came out a short time ago.

From the FCC to the MPAA, with stops at high schools and the Republican/Democrat conventions in between. It’d be funny if it weren’t true. As it is, it makes me want to cry.

I just checked my order status page at Apple, and the ship date for my laptop was bumped to Feb 28 as of, oh, about an hour ago.

So close…

I wish they had known sooner, so that I could have built up a bit less excitement.

Faugh.

If you’re at all into post-rock (pretentious wankery, in other words), Thee Silver Mt. Zionist is a good little blog to check out. Very pleasant, nice-sounding music along the lines of Godspeed! You Black Emperor and Sigur Ros.

Well, some of it is.

Anyway, neat noise. I recommend it.

Thanks to the hard work of the Linux development team, and the latest drivers from ATI, I now have a computer that is capable of 3D acceleration.

This makes me oh, so happy!

After only five years (or so) of searching for the missing element of my Tad Williams “Otherland” hardcover set, I finally found a copy that wasn’t some wildly-overpriced “first edition” in poor condition.

It’s very pretty, and now I have all four.

I just realized: For all that I bug Char about her propensity for redecorating the house at what I deem to be excessive intervals…

What do you all think of the new look? I’m playing around with the details of colour and image, but the layout and clean style of this new theme really appeals to me.

It seems that I’ve hit the 10,000-spam mark, sometime last week.

Wow, that’s depressing. You guys don’t even keep up with the spammers

I forgot I even had this site.

Heh

Char’s been at me again, so here’s the updated skinny: We’re swimming, which is good. That’s really about it.

I’ve got some nifty projects on my plate at work, which is great. On the home-project front, Aaron got it into his head to rewrite CRON-O-Meter from the ground up, which means, well, I get a break

Heh

Nothing new in the world, folks. Politics as usual, business the same.

How are all of you?

Finally, a working primary PC.

I’ve missed having this all going, and as such I plan to enjoy my newly-functional technological marvel. However, this weekend, at least, I have more old-fashioned plans on my docket. Specifically, I intend to read a bunch whilst curled up on the couch with my Charling, who is returned from her travels.

I bought her a copy of the newest $HYPED_BOOK this morning, which she’s going to read before I dive into it.

We’re getting the house in shape to host a cocktail party of some kind, probably next week.

And, for those of you of the geekier persuasion, make a note: Using emacs as an editor at work is hazardous to your sanity when using any other kind of text editor, even something as basic as a text input field in a blogging page. I am so used to the emacs keystrokes at this point that I’m seriously thinking of hunting down how to make it the default editor component in… everything. I blame my boss, whose tireless emacs evangelism — combined with habit, and some damn nifty text tricks — has gotten me hooked on the goddamned kitchen sink application.

Char and I are, more or less, settling in. We’ve still got a state of total chaos in the kitchen, but things are coming together. I predict a lot of money spend @ Ikea over the next month, organizing the limited space in our cooking area. All told, though, it’ll work out nicely. Apparently, tomorrow is my day to clean out the cat poop, if the lady’s chore list is to be believed. So, I’ll get started on the right foot, I guess.

Other things are… not so good.

The other point of chaos is my computer room. The sheer volume of gadgets involved renders setting it up an epic experience matcheable by few others. That being said, I got the last piece in place last night, and turned on my computer and… turned on my computer and… turned on my computer and… nothing happened. The power light came on, the motherboard’s ethernet controller came on, and… nothing else. No fans, no video output, nothing. For all intents and purposes, the lovely, high-end machine upon which I was developing my projects, tinkering, and gaming, and generally keeping much of my artwork and creative output has become, in a tradition stretching back years now, a paperweight of extraordinary cost.

Naturally, I’m pretty sad about all of this. It looks more and more like I’ll be looking at about 4-5 months running only a server and the work laptop at home, before I can afford a replacement. And even that will take some doing. It may be late winter.

On a slight positive note, my server still works, although we don’t have internet at home until Monday (this is me, in at work on saturday, blogging). So, the REALLY vital stuff is safe. In comparison to my server (worth about $40 on the market these days), the expensive computer’s value is nearly nil. So I consider myself somewhat fortunate. But, only in comparison.

…

I also finished Cerebus last night. Mr. Sim is cracked, to be sure, but the end of that story sure was… sad. Twenty-six years and three months later, 300 issues, and a progression from parody to prime minister to pope to bartender to boyfriend to revolutionary to figurehead.

And died alone, unmourned, and unloved.