The Cranberries – Just My Imagination

“Cobain’s Diary Reveals Tortured Man” … I love how observant headlines can be! This is from an article about how excerpts from his journals were published, what an exciting development! Maybe this is why he shot himself in the head! And here I thought he was just cleaning out the barrel of his gun and it was all an accident. Pfft.

Finished reading The Redemption of Althalus last night:

The Redemption Of Althalus, by David and Leigh Eddings, 792 pages

A friend of mine suggested I read this book after I had been pleased by many of David Eddings’ other books. Unlike most of his books, this is only one volume, and Eddings’ true talent for character development shines. At times I find myself a bit bored with the progression of battles and the strategy involved in books such as this one, but in this particular book I was very entertained during the portions having to do with battles. The characters meddle with time and space in innovative ways so that the plot is continually unpredictable. And the characters themselves are lovingly unforgettable. In all I’d definitely recommend this to any Eddings fan, as well as someone just wanting a taste of Eddings who isn’t ready to tackle one the series’.

I think I am gonna start reading Terry Pratchett’s Mort tonight… a lot of Pratchett fans I talk to say this is one of his best of this series, so I’m really looking forward to it. Oh my life is so exciting.

Myk’s vacation starts this weekend, a whole week off! Of course that means I wont be online all day, hehee, it’ll be nice to be together for a full week though %) My computer parts are expected to come in sometime next week as well, hopefully they will be sent by newegg tomorrow, so we can get them by next Wednesday or so. I can’t wait %) We’re going to a LAN party this weekend, it’s really ashame that my computer wont be ready with it’s new stuff, but I have used it in the past for lan parties, just one more wont be too terrible. So I installed Unreal Tournament today, first time installing it in Debian! And the only trouble I had was running an X program… which was easily solved with some help from a friend, so that’s all running and ready for the party. Went into windows and installed Battlefield 1942 this morning, and Warcraft 3 is all set up to be played %)

Ok, so Episode 2 is in the Imax. I am very VERY disappointed that it’s not showing here in Philadelphia, but we were sorta considering going to Pittsburgh to see it (NYC is closer but I really don’t like that city much, and Myk DOES know his way around Pittsburgh). Anyway this would be cool for several reasons. My broski Eric lives in Pittsburgh, if we needed to we could crash there… and two of the people on my xanga subscription list are there! It’d be so cool to meet them ;) since they do have plans to attend opening showings of starwars. But see, my computer stuff will come sometime next week, and I’d HATE to not be able to get my computer stuff ’cause I’m in Pittsburgh (assuming the package doesn’t arrive by Thursday). Plus this is Myk’s vacation, and I really think he wants to relax during it… my begging to drive 6 hours to see an 8 story yoda fight with a lightsaber is no one’s idea of relaxation now is it? So I am torn between my want to go, and KNOWING that if I make a big deal over it Myk will forgo his wishes and take me to see it, possibly being miserable the whole time. I don’t want to ruin the only vacation he gets this year! Then again he might enjoy going… bleeehh %)

So I was messing around with gimp::fu yesterday, the perl module that comes with The Gimp.. and it seems pretty cool. I think I will go through a bit more of the “scripting” tutorial today to see how things work within gimp perl scripts… maybe I can create a few kewl perl scripts to make gimp make pretty things for me %D Yeah so I will go try to do that and hope I am not too eternally distracted like usual… ever notice that when you are at work or something you think of all the wonderful things you can do with the computer if you just had more time? And then on weekends, vacations and times of unemployment all that just goes out the windows and you goof off constantly? Yeah, I have that illness ;)

*wanders off*

How has my day been going?

(a small snippit from chat, uh we have our halloween nicknames on)

-@PrincessEvil2- YAY! it works %)
-@FrankenTime- k8)
-@PrincessEvil2- crap
-@PrincessEvil2- Segmentation fault

It’s been like this all day. Bleh…

Vertical Horizon – You Say

So I have to pay $9.95 if I want to see the Wallace And Gromit shorts. This is very sad. I don’t want to PAY $10 for 9 1-2 minute movies that I can only download and watch on my computer! I wish they’d release the region 1 dvd… I guess if worst comes to worst I can probably get someone to send me the VHS that’s being released over there (no, they wont even release the vhs here, how sucky is that?) Gah… maybe someday they’ll release the dvd here… but I won’t hold my breath.

I haven’t been feeling all that great the past couple days, mostly just tired and I have this awful cough. I’m prolly fighting off all sorts of viruses, since it’s that time of year… at least I don’t have a full blown virus or something yet, and it’s almost November *knocks on wood*

I went for a walk yesterday, it was nice. I even saw a deer! I had never seen one in this area before, and this was 3:30 in the afternoon, so quite notable. I saw some rabbits too, and a bunch of squirrels %) It was a nice walk.

So those sniper shootings are really creepy. I usually don’t pay much attention to the news, but this has got everyone scared… even as ‘far’ as I am from DC. People getting shot just doing ordinary things, and the shooter is threatening kids now?! That just sealed his fate I’m afraid, sicko. And demanding 10 million dollars? This is obviously not a very smart person, he should know that such things just *dont* happen. Oh well… lets just hope this all ends soon, kids are missing quality outdoor time because of this maniac!

YAY! But are they playing it here in Philadelphia? … I don’t want to talk about it *cries* we are considering a trip to pittsburgh however…

Episode 2 IMAX Theater Listings

Tears For Fears – Head Over Heels

Finally got rid of my headache yesterday %) Ended up going to Mailboxes Etc to send out the stuff to newegg for the exchange… FedEx is evil! It cost me almost $40 to send the stuff back!!! like 35 something for shipping, plus the $4 for $500 of insurance I needed to have on it. And this is just standard ground delivery, the overnight shipping was $176! The delivery date is thursday, which is nice, ’cause that means if newegg isnt too backed up with returns I should get my new stuff by mid-next week.

I spent the morning looking for information on the problems we were having with the board. I found out a lot of interesting things… For one I found out that this board apparently has some memory issues, but I NEVER knew anything about this until I specifically did a search for it, which is disappointing. They SAY it should be fixed in an upcoming BIOS upgrade, so we’ll wait and see. They say for the time being if there are problems I should set my ram settings at 133 mhz instead of 166 (for my DDR333 ram) which is frustrating ’cause I paid for the faster ram *shrugs* luckily I’m not too much of a stickler on the speed of ram so I can stand to wait for a bios upgrade. Also I found out that under optimal conditions this board unofficially supporst DDR400 ram *and there was much overclockers rejoicing* So in short, I found out that the ram probably was not faulty, it was board problems. I also did some research into the “Spurious 8259A interrupt: IRQ7” error we were getting during heavy system load (first OS compile). I now don’t think it was what was causing my crashes, since a lot of people have this problem and just ignore it because it doesnt cause problems. The only people who had real problems were ones who had their IRQ7 port being shared (which I did not, and most people didn’t, that’s part of the reason the error is so odd). But it’s not board, processor, or chipset specific. It happens with all sorts of hardware, and I was not really able to find a definative solution. Anyway, I think when I get my parts back we are going to start out by installing windows XP just to TEST everything, since that is the OS that supports what we use and most people using the messageboards I looked at used that. I’ll delete it after, but just to make sure everything is running fine… *shrugs*

I also went looking for drivers for the onboard sound card and lan card.. a search that ended up a bit disappointing. I was unable to find a soundcard driver from SiS, they support the two previous chipsets (SiS961 and SiS962) with drivers for linux, but not mine. I guess this isn’t *too* bad, in the bios it’s easy to disable the onboard sound and just install my SB Live card… that’s a better card than the onboard one anyway, it’s just it feels like a waste having a card in there I can’t use, ya’know? I was lucky to find support for the lan card however, so I’ll just use the onboard lan until we break the
boundries of 10/100 mb across lan transfers ;)

Anyway, the new Wallace and Gromit movies should have been released today %D! So I am gonna wander into windows to watch them (no quicktime for linux… bleh!). *wanders*

Better Than Ezra – At The Stars

Wow, I’ve been rather long-winded lately. This entry will be short %)

I ended up with a pretty bad migrane yesterday afternoon, I think it’s just ’cause I’ve been stressed out. Unfortunately the headache lasted through this morning and I’ve spent most of the day in bed, I should probably go back since my headache is still sorta ‘lurking’ but I am too stubborn o_O

So we thought we’d just send all the stuff back to newegg for a refund, but we talked to some friends and they encouaged us just to get an exchange. It’s possible that the motherboard was bad and damaged other parts (since there are problems all around it seems). They said that newegg was great about taking things back for exchange, so they shouldnt have a problem, I was skeptical but called today and it doesnt seem to be a problem. So tonight I’ll be heading out to Mailboxes Etc. (the location here is open til 8 pm, which rocks ’cause then i dont need to take Myk’s Jeep during the day). I need to send it through a insured, signed and guarenteed delivery shipper, so I’ll prolly just pay and arm and a leg for FedEx two day shipping (it shouldnt be more than $25 I hope..). ‘Cause as soon as newegg gets my returned items they can ship me my new stuff, and I want to make SURE I get my new stuff sometime next week, while Myk has off for the week.

Of course this makes me reluctant to install much on this computer, since I’ll just be reinstalling next week, which is annoying… But hey, if I break something too badly I won’t really need to worry about it much right? %D I think I’ll definately install Gentoo on my new box when it’s finally running… anyway *wanders off*

I dont even want to talk about the problems I’ve had this weekend, but I suppose to explain the rest of my weekend thus far I have to give a bit of background.

So the ram was just at the wrong setting right? No it was the power supply! Wait, maybe I have a bad processor, that MUST be it! Yeah, my problems did not end friday, I took all the parts out of the computer friday night because Myk wanted to take a look at the board, to see if he could find any shorts or anything. I got drunk and watched MST3K. This has all just been so stressful… So we finally decided that the problems we have been having were most likely caused by the processor. I woke up saturday morning with a killer hangover, and I surfed the web a bit, and decided I’d just go to CompUSA and pick up a new processor (Myk has a 2.0 ghz processor in his computer, but the last thing I wanted to do was chance messing that one up by putting it in my board). So at about 2 yesterday afternoon, when I was finally dressed, I headed up to CompUSA. It was crazy busy there, apparently they were having a big “12 hour sale” or something. Anyway I finally snagged a sales person out of the half dozen running around. The sales guy looked strangely familiar, but I’ll get to that later. I bought the pentium 4 ($250, GAH), and came home. So we put the chip in and started a redhat install. It got pretty far… then some sort of spur error (I guess this is what had been happening all along to cause the crashes during compile). Which leads me to believe it is the motherboard. At this point I was completely stressed out. Frustrated beyond belief because everything SHOULD have worked! It was compatible! But now, because of faulty ram, or a faulty motherboard, it’s all just gone to hell. And I could return it all and get replacements, I dont know, any problem could have damaged my other parts. So we’re just going to send it all back, pay the restocking fee (like $60 plus fedex shipping) and be done with this all. I should have known I could not pull off this building my own computer thing! I’m just going to wait a few months and get a kickass Christmas special Dell. At least this way I will have old r2 for a nice little backup system *pats r2*

None the less, was quite depressed about this whole ordeal, I was really looking forward to getting a nice, new, fast computer and now it’s all just been shot down. So I packed up the new CompUSA pentium and while it dawned on me who the sales guy reminded me of, AND had the same first name of (all that was on his nametag was his first name). See a few months back a guy with the nick “TorchDragon” IM’ed me on ICQ (I don’t usually respond to random people) said he lived in the area and was trying to get people to come to an annual LAN party. HAH! Like I’d trust some random guy on ICQ enough to bring myself and my computer to a said meeting place for a “LAN party”. Not to mention he did the whole “wow you are a geek girl *drool*” routine on me, and as flattering as it is I am really not interested %) So I was really cautious, and considered just ignoring him after that. But I didn’t, and we kept talking, he even came into #13thHour for a couple months, sometimes played UT and stuff. It really turned out to be fun. Still, even though he lives in the area I was again, very cautious about meeting him, like I usually am with online people. I’d have to meet him in a public place (with Myk of course, I wouldn’t go alone), and the opportunity just never arose. Plus around mid september he stopped coming around so much and we sorta started losing touch. And I can say, unfortunately, that it didn’t bother me a whole hell of a lot, I meet a lot of people online and some just naturally grow distant, I can’t hang on to every cool person I meet. Anyway, this salesperson had the same name, and sorta looked like the pictures I had seen of TorchDragon… so I went back to CompUSA, and while in line for my return the same salesguy walked up and said “aw didnt work out?” (on my previous visit I had told him a bit of my problems). I was like “naw, must not be the processor… uh… permit me, you look strangely familiar… what’s your last name?” BINGO! I was completely floored. Last I knew he didn’t have a job. I stammered a bit through my shock and managed to say “OH WOW NO WAY!! I’m PrincessLeia2!!! Lyz!! You TorchDragon!!!” He looked pretty shocked too and was like “WOA!!! YOU’RE KIDDING!!!” So we stood there for a few seconds with our mouths hanging open, then just started to laugh and make comments about how weird this all was. Of all the sales people working that day, I just happened to get the attention of the one that I knew from online, it was very strange indeed.. and even stranger that I was brave enough to ask his last name, I don’t think I usually would have, it was very out of character for me. So for the half hour I stood in the return line we talked, it was really cool, caught up on how we were doing, talked about computers (mostly graphics cards), we talked a bit about Gentoo (he uses linux, but not on his workstations, so he wasnt familiar with the coolness of Gentoo, hehe), and he invited me to “Winterfest” the winter version of the LAN party he hosts… to which I responded “yeah me and what computer?!” which caused a bit of a chuckle, hehe. So I got everything returned and we agreed to hang out sometime (next time not at his workplace), so it was really cool. And meeting him was probably the only thing that made me *not* cry when I got home from CompUSA yesterday afternoon (honestly, I was heartbroken over the whole computer thing).

So this whole meeting lead me to do a lot of thinking about coincidences and fate. I’m not a particularly religious person, I could barely even call myself spiritual unless I am in the mood. But while we were at the store the guy who was at the returns desk, who had seen this whole strange chance meeting said “hey, maybe it was fate”. And I considered all the coincidences that lead up to this meeting, all the things I did that I wouldn’t normally have done, and they really do add up. So maybe there is something to this whole fate thing afterall… maybe this was some sort of sign that this person will somehow become important to me, or vice versa, and in the whole scheme of things it would really suck if I let him go (this is all friend basis, I am sure you all know how hopelessly in love I am with Myk). So just in case I think TorchDragon and I should renew our friendship… and when I came home and told Myk about what happened he was like “Cool! We gotta have him over sometime!” So I think it’ll work out quite nicely %) Maybe we can invite him to a lan party or something in the near future, and maybe I’ll have my new computer by the time Winterfest rolls around and we can consider going to that.

Getting back to my computer problems… some good did come out of this %) After we got r2 all put back together and running (and it works fine so it was definately a problem with ram or motherboard, not any of my old stuff) we decided to put Debian on it. We didn’t even consider putting Gentoo on because of it’s outragous compile time, if it takes 5 hours or so on a 2 ghz machine I dont even want to know how poor r2 would take it %) So no more bloated Red Hat for me YAY! Debian is pretty cool so far, the apt-get system is really sweet, much better than wandering around finding rpm’s anyway… and I think I will learn a great deal because I really have to pay attention to what I need on my system, since I will have to install it piece by piece, not like with redhat that has half the linux world preinstalled ;) Hopefully I won’t break *too* many things over the next few days, so ole’ r2 will be ready for that LAN party on saturday. Heh, anyway I have been using linux for about 10 months now, I guess it’s time to move away from “newbie” redhat, hehe.

I guess I’ll go noew, there is still a lot of customizing I have to do with my system, and I want to do most of it while Myk is home so he can help me when I break things beyond my capabilities to repair, hehee. *wanders off into the wonderful new world of Debian Land*

Ugh… problems with new computer stuff! First there was this stupid beeping coming from my motherboard when it was active, I wasnt sure what it was, and when I called Asus tech support they said “that’s weird” arg! Anyway, i was poking around the ultra cool bios, and i noticed that the powersource was not giving off enough power, so we went to compUSA were we got it and sure enough, it was a faulty source. So we came home last night and installed the new power supply (we had them test it at the store to make sure this one was ok). We booted up, and started installing Gentoo, no beeps… then KERNAL PANIC! Gaaah!!! So the power supply was part of the problem but not the whole problem. At this point I was ready to cry, I mean I had just spent, what $450 on this new stuff and it’s not working. Not to mention I bought it online so taking anything back would be a terrible pain! So i was looking in the motherboard handbook, and in the ram section it said the board was only qualified to handle a short list of pc2700 ram, none of which were 512 mb, and none of it mushkin ram. I really was upset by this point % I started getting ready to ship the stupid ram back (and pay for shipping and the 15% restocking fee) and then buy 2100 ram myself (I told myk I wanted to pay for it since it was my mistake). So just to make sure my ram was useless I gave Asus a call this morning (and of course, their help line is not 1-800, so 2 days in a row i paid for phone calls to them). And when I finally got off hold (which wasnt too bad, they played Enya as hold music, lol) I talked to a fairly knowledgable techie and he said “mushkin ram is great ram, and your board CAN take the 512 chip of 2700, just go into the bios and change the ram setting from Synchronous to Asynchronous” I asked him about the section of the manual on “approved ram” and he assured me that’s just them trying to cover their asses (by not having people put in crappy powerful ram), and that my ram was really good (duh! that’s why i spent so freaking much on it) and it should be fine. YAY!!!!!

So I am waiting for Myk to get home so he can help me through the install of Gentoo or Debian. I am still torn as to which to use… with Debian I get a fast install, and the stability that we have come to know and love from the wide world of Debian… Plus a lot of our friends use it, so when I had problems I wouldn’t have to look far for help. But Gentoo is just so cool! I dont know, I have a tendancy of going through and making sure I know how everything works, and I am afraid on a system that is still in testing like Gentoo I’m probably going to break all sorts of things, hehe. But emerge rocks! Hehe… Oh did I mention Gentoo takes like, HOURS to compile? I think it takes something like 5 hours at least… on a 2 ghz machine %s plus compiling all the things i need (like enlightenment) just to run the silly thing… gah I just don’t know, I’ll keep you posted tho ;)

So right now I am using Myk’s computer, I think he is seriously paranoid when I use his computer, so I am just using a terminal, and I am doing all my surfing through links in my webserver shell, LOL. Yep, that means this is my first xanga entry done with a textual browser! It’s interesting… (%

I miss my computer! Hopefully by tomorrow we will have it up and running, I’ll reinstall win2k this weekend on my little (12 gig) harddrive so next weekend when we go to the LAN party I will be all prepared, with my new kickass system! (that’s another reason I am so glad all my problems are resolved, if I had to order new ram it probably wouldnt come til next thursday, and there is no way my system would be completely configured enough for a lan party in two days!). Right, so I am gonna go read now, since there isn’t much else to do with my computer down and all *wanders off*

WOOHOO! My new motherboard, processor and ram just arrived %D!!!

The Beatles – You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away

So my big news of the week? WallaceAndGromit.net is up and running!!!

So go see it noew ’cause I put lots of time and effort into and Wallace and Gromit rock.


Which Personality Disorder Do You Have?
brought to you by Quizilla

I am so glad I have quizzes to tell me things like this, I wouldnt know otherwise, really.

This reminds me, I have been paying careful attention to my shyness recently. I guess mostly because I REALLY feel ashamed of it, and it’s something that I think I can overcome eventually if I take the time to understand it. So we went to that crappy LAN party on saturday, and after leaving, I realized I wasn’t particularly shy there. I mean I didn’t talk a whole lot, but when there was something to talk about I spoke up normally. Some guy was asking how to play a game and I wandered over and helped him out getting his character set up and everything. I didn’t really realize I wasn’t being shy until we were driving home. So that blows my whole “i am shy in social situations and not in professional situations” theory out of the water. I think I have discovered my problem however! I am shy (unless intoxicated, that changes everything) only around people I feel I have a social obligation to impress. So when we are around Myk’s good friends I feel like I have to impress them so I get all self conscious about what I am saying so I just end up being quiet (all sublconsciousy of course). It’s terribly frustrating… especially because in my mind I know I do make a good impression if I am not shy. I think I need to have a long talk with my subconscious and tell it it’s being irrational.

So FedEx is cool… they have this neat tracking system on their website that tells you all the places your package was shipped, and when, down to the minute! So my new computer stuff is being shipped by FedEx and they tell me that as of 8:30 this morning it’s on a truck in the area to be delivered, woohoo! So hopefully sometime this afternoon it will be delivered, they better hurry, it’s already 3 pm, hehe. I cant wait to get my computer up and running with his new 2.0 ghz processor %) The poor 450 mhz one he has is really terrible, hehe.

Ok I am gonna talk about wallace and gromit again, ’cause I am so excited. See I found this website a while back that has tons of really great screencaptures from the movies. It’s on an AOL site, so pretty sluggish at times, so I was thinking I’d email the webmaster of the site to ask him if he’d mind me reproducing his image archive on my website. So I write this nice email, asking politely and all, send it off, and a few minutes later I get an email “Returned mail: User unknown” GAH!!! So now I am trying to rationalize stealing these images %D I mean really, if he cared that much about his webpage don’t you think he’d at least update his website with a current email address? On his webpage it says the last update was in 1998 anyway! That’s 4 years ago! So I think I will put a little disclaimer on that part of my site saying that they images were “borrowed” from that website, and making it clear that I did try to contact the owner. That’s ethical right? I just want to put all these images on a fast server so more people can have faster access to them %) hehe END RATIONALIZATION;}

Just to reply to one of those comments yesterday, I do apoligize, there are some computer science majors who know what they are doing, I even know a few… it’s just that lately I’ve been running into so many that are so *clueless* that it’s amazing. This one kid is in his 3rd year of a CS major and he still says he does not “understand the differences between Operating Systmes” … he askes me all the strangest questions about Linux, and it’s quite obvious he really has no idea… and just the other day he came into our chat room asking for help with a windows install, which turned out to be an upgrade disk and he didnt have a previous windows verion disk. This other girl I know is in a “web master” degree, I guess it focuses on design and how to make pretty things with front page, because this girl doesnt even know what ISP stands for, NOT JOKING. I don’t mean to sound bitter or condicending, but even as a webmaster you need to know a bit about namservers and DNS, right? Unless all the websites you make are hosted by a cheesey domain hoster (yahoo! and the like…). I don’t even admin my webpages (Myk does that, since it’s his box they are hosted on) and I know what he’s doing, I know about domain names and such. I guess my point is I am frustrated that some people are in it for the money and others for the love of it. I guess Myk works for some people who are “in it for the money” and even if they are good at what they do they NEVER would consider doing it in their free time, and that is something that is just unconcievable to me. Everything I have learned I taught myself because of the sheer joy of the process and final acomplishments… and I can see some inexperienced CS major getting a job before me *sigh*

It’s raining out %)

Well I guess I’m gonna go do some work noew… *wanders off*