The Occasional Solipsist

So I have had my two new favourite toys for just over a week now, and now that I am almost finished working a week of nights, I am finally going to get to play with them. By toys, I mean my HP laptop sent to replace the one that died a horrible death from motherboard failure (twice) and the Asus Eee I bought as a backup for when (not if!) my new HP experiences a similar fate.

But the Eee’s Linux distro just plain sucks balls. I don’t care what anyone says, geeks who feel that because Linux is open source, you are compelled to both like it and hate Windows are just being elitist. I get a lot of shit for that attitude at work, but the world gets by for the most part on Windows platforms. Sorry, but there it is. I’m not a Linux hater, but this particular distro totally sucks, so I dumped it and installed Windows XP on my Eee and now I love it.

The new HP does run a lot better than the old one though, and it has an unnecessarily large screen, all the better to watch movies on (read:porn). The thing is 17 inches, and something in the neighbourhood of 10 lbs or so. Its more of a gigantic paperweight than a portable, but I guess that's what the Eee is for. I am planning on finally getting in on an MMO on it this weekend (City of Heroes!), even though I have always said that the only way I would ever have had time to play one would be after Superwife divorces me. (Which hopefully won't be happening anytime soon). We’ll see how that goes.

Ah, that’s what I’ve missed most about not having a pc at home: The ability to satisfy my compulsion to post inane horseshit that no one really cares about, any time I want.

Labels: everything else, tech

Back when I was staying with The Out-Laws while our house was being built, I thought I had it bad when I had to be on dial-up to get my internet on. I lamented, I complained, I maybe whined a little. They eventually got high speed via a rural hick wireless connection, (which I also now have at my place) and I am pretty sure it was all because of the aforementioned whining.

But my beautiful HP laptop, trusted friend and conduit to all things external to my home, died on me last week. Cause of death seems to be motherboard failure. So now its off to the under warrantee repair folks who will hopefully treat my girl right and get her back to me soon. Sorry, but anything I spend that amount of time with is going to be female in my mind.

And now that she's gone, I only wish that I was on dialup, because at least then I'd still be able to sit on my couch and be connected when I should be sleeping like the rest of the house. I seriously feel like I am missing a limb, or at least an extremity. And I have so much time on my hands. In the past week I've read two books and a graphic novel that I have been meaning to get into for over a month.

The B.I.L. has very graciously loaned us the use of his desktop, so that Superwife can do her work from home until my old friend is back, but it is not at all the same. I just can't sit in the office on a pc anymore. I feel too tied down, so I only use it to start a download, copy any completed files (hello Doctor Who xmas Special!) or post on this blog. Hopefully the people at HP get me back in business soon. The time-off part of my swing shift is coming fast and I can only read so many books.

Labels: everything else, tech

Blu-Ray FTW!
Originally uploaded by raistlinsghost

With the recent announcement that HD-DVD is being dropped by WB, its almost a guarantee that Blu-Ray will win the High Def war.

I bought my PS3 for the games but if I needed another reason to remain a Sony fanboy, there it is. Did my pen from CES 2007 just go up in price?

Labels: gaming, movies, tech

So the pressure from the US lobbies looks like it might finally cause Canadian copyright laws to change. For the much, much worse.

Apparently in an effort to impress his asshole friend George Bush, Stephen Harper is backing a bill that is so strict as to be ludicrous. If passed it will make the US' DMCA law look tame by comparison. And tell that to the 20,000 Americans who have been sued.

I am not at all ashamed to be a 'downloader'. There are those who believe that the online dissemination of files, music, video and applications is immoral, and in some cases illegal. I don't. And I certainly don't feel that the downloading of a work that I would not purchase if it weren't freely available otherwise constitutes any kind of fraud. If I do want to own a product enough, I buy it. If I'm just kind of interested, I'll download it. Simple as that. Due to that policy, filesharing has opened my eyes to many different works that I have subsequently gone out and purchased that I would otherwise never have heard of. And why there have to be lines drawn between use of the internet to download content and the copying of it via other means (a television program for example, via a vcr or pvr) is beyond me. But maybe that too will change if Mr. Harper has his way with this bill.

Here's a link to a list of what Canadians can do, and for those in the lazier crowd (like me) here's a quick and easy site that fills out a letter to your MP decrying this nonsense. All you have to do is pick your province and your MP and click send. Don't let this be one of those case where you could have done something and didn't and then complain about it later.

Labels: everything else, rants, tech

I play the lottery every other week or so, and among my many, many quirks, every time I see something pricey online that I would like to buy but can't afford, I bookmark it with a 'When I win the Lottery' tag, and forget about it.

I think a person could learn a great deal about me by looking at those bookmarks.

Either way, I have just added this to the list: A bonafide Flying Saucer. Yup, you read that right. A UFO. Although I guess it would be an IFO. Whatever. Check it out here.

Labels: everything else, tech

I have actually been a little bummed lately that there won't be any good technology stores where I'm moving in a few weeks. I do a lot of online shopping for my gear, games, etc, but there is something to be said about standing in a brick and mortar store and looking at a few hundred big screen tv's to get my geek on. And Best Buy has always been my store of choice. Anything tech-related that I do buy in the non-virtual world I buy there. No commission, people that actually have a clue when I ask them any technical questions. A bigger fan of Best Buy there never was. Until I received the following two emails:

From: Name Removed (Best Buy Canada)
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 11:35 AM
To:
Subject: Prize Notification - Best Buy Police VIP Passes

Hello,
Congratulations! You have been randomly chosen to win one pair of Best Buy VIP Police Station Passes (no commercial value) valid for entry in the the Best Buy VIP Police Station. The Best Buy VIP Police Station is a VIP Room situated in the venue where you will be treated to a little VIP treatment inclusive of tasty Moroccan appetizers prior to the concert.

As a reminder you must possess valid concert tickets to the July 23rd Toronto Police concert at Air Canada Centre to gain entry into the venue and to use your Best Buy VIP Police Station Passes. The Best Buy VIP Police Station passes are not valid for concert entry.

To be declared an official winner you must:

* Reply to this prize notification in 48 hours - Deadline July 20, 2007 12 :00pm PST
* Be the age of majority in your province of residence
* Possess valid concert tickets to the July 23rd concert in Toronto at Air Canada Centre
* Answer the skill testing question and sign the prize waiver form attached.
* Fax the signed and completed prize waiver form to Attn Name Removed @ xxx.xxx.xxxx . Please reply to this email notifying us that the fax has gong through.
* Reply to this email with your full name and address as it appears on your ID as this is the name that will appear at will call when you go to pick up your passes.

Once you have been declared the winner (completed the above) we will provide you with instruction on how to obtain your Best Buy VIP Police Station Passes.

Thank You,
Name Removed
Best Buy Canada Ltd.


From: Name Removed (Best Buy Canada)
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 2:59 PM
To:
Subject: ERROR - Prize Notification - Best Buy Police VIP Passes


The following Prize Notification was sent out in Error. If you have received this please disregard and delete this email.

The official winners will be contacted directly in an email to follow in the next hour.

We apologize for the confusion.

Thanks,
Name Removed

You apologize for the confusion? I am a HUGE Police fan, I am already going to be attending the concert mentioned, and I was absolutely ECSTATIC that I had won backstage passes to it. And then I get an, 'Oops, sorry about that' email? What the fuck?!?

Well, let's just say I'm not so bummed that there won't be a Best Buy where I'm moving anymore. Because I won't be setting foot in one of their stores or spending any money on them online again ever again. Assholes.

EDIT 07-16-07 - Oh and now one more thing. I just got an email from one of the other 'winners', thanking Best Buy for giving out all of the recipient's email addresses in the notification email. Turns out the douchebag who sent the notification just plunked everyone's address into an email and hit send, so I can now look forward to thanking Best Buy for increasing my spam as well as screwing me with this phoney prize notification in the first place. It just gets better and better.

Labels: everything else, rants, tech

I got back late yesterday morning from my trip to Vegas and Holy Shit was I tired. Know what happens when you go to not one, but two conventions in Las Vegas? You walk. A lot.

But going to the CES convention and the AVN Expo in the same week was a real treat. An online friend called me a Superdork for going to the conventions, and as labels fit, its not a bad one. But I don't know how I could have more fun in four days and still stay married. Here are the highlights:



Gadgets, Gadgets, Gadgets - Robots, completely net enabled houses, SlingMobile, IPTV, next gen mobile phones. These are just a few of the things I got to see at this year's CES. The only bad thing about seeing all these cool toys is that I now want to buy each and every single one of them.

Got my ass fragged by the best - The World Series of Gaming had a huge tent at the event, and I got to play Quake 4 against some of the world's best gamers. I actually didn't fare as badly as I would've thought, but since no one I knew saw me sneak in a few kills, there's only my word as proof of my geek cred.



3 Doors Down - The guys who I only knew from their songs Kryptonite and Loser put on a free acoustic concert the second day of the show, and it was really good. The funniest part was the ridiculous amount of handheld recording devices getting the concert on PDAs, mobiles, camera, camcorders. It was like a parody of an 80s Def Leopard concert using gadgets instead of lighters.

The Gay Discount - I must have been accidentally wearing my homosexual camouflage (homoflauge?) to the convention the one day, because as I was checking out in a lunch line, I found out about a special 'members only' discount. The guy working the counter was about to charge me for my $15.00 cheeseburger, fries and water, when he told me that he'd give me a special discount down to $4.50. I thanked him and offered to tip him, and that was when he looked me over and said 'Don't worry honey. We play on the same team, and we need all the money we can get.' I smiled, said nothing more, and accepted my discount. Hey, it was $10!



My what a big cell phone I have - I came across a booth for a new single use 'Cell Phone Condom', complete with bikini clad beauties eager to demo the device on any unsuspecting sucker's attendee's mobile device. So I bit, and as one of the girls lasciviously demoed the product, she told me in all seriousness that my cell phone was so big, she could hardly get the condom on. I just about fell apart. I asked her if the condom would still work, and she looked from my face, directly to my crotch and back, and said 'Don't worry, we'll find a way to fit it in there'. I actually giggled.

Special preview of Spiderman 3 - At the Sony booth I got to see about 10 minutes of footage from the new Spidey flick that no one from the public had ever seen before. It was fucking awesome. Fun fact: There was more security in the theater to ensure no one was filming the footage than I'd ever seen in one room before.

Got a drink dumped on me in the World's Biggest Strip Club - My friend was being worked over by a rather nasty stripper at Sapphires, apparently the biggest strip club ever, and when he turned her down on going back to the VIP room with her, she not only dumped his drink all over him, she grabbed mine and hosed me down too, forcing us to cut out. I should probably thank her though, cause if she didn't do that, who knows how much more money I would've blown.



I got to meet The Porn Queen of MySpace - Not only did I get to meet Dana DeArmond, but she hugged me. Tight. I have the picture to prove that. I was the first person to show up for her fan signing at four o'clock, and she was very friendly, down to earth, and genuinely seemed to want to have a conversation with me. Superwife doesn't have to worry about competition, but if I were a weaker man...

Attack of the Geek (that would be me) - I got to meet Kevin Perreira and Olivia Munn of Attack of the Show fame. They were filming a bit for the show at the AVN Expo, and afterwards I marched on up to them and made a complete ass of myself expressing my fanboyism for the pair. Olivia even zinged me for the enormous bag of porn I was carting around.

I don't imagine that I'll bother going back next year for either convention. I can't see how I could have a better time.

Feel free to peruse the rest of my pics from the trip on my Flickr page.

Labels: everything else, gaming, porn, tech

A good friend of mine and I are heading to Las Vegas tomorrow for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), something I have been trying to get to with varying degrees of effort for years. It just happens that I am off for the exact 4 days of the conference, and Superwife, being the super wife that she is, convinced me that I should go now while I have the opportunity.

Needless to say I have been very excited for the last month or so about the whole thing. Looking forward to checking out all the new gadgets, phones, cameras, and computer hardware and peripherals that will be coming out, to say nothing of attending the World Series of Gaming.

To put it mildly I have been very happy as I have been getting ready for the event.

And then a friend of mine asked me if I was going to attend the porn convention that runs concurrently with CES.

To which I responded "Come again?"

After I picked my jaw up I Googled other conventions going on at the same time as CES, found out that yes, the world's largest adult entertainment conevention is in fact going on at the same time, and thanked my friend for saving me from possibly missing out on something that I would regret forever.

To paraphrase George Costanza, for the heterosexual male completely unaware that the trip he was taking to attend a tech convention just happens to run at the same time as the world's biggest congregation of porn stars, it was like discovering plutonium by accident.

So now I just have to figure out how to make Superwife okay with the signature of Nicole Sheridan I plan on coming home with on my ass. Think a snap of the next gen Blackberry will cut it?

Labels: everything else, gaming, tech

Amber Mac, co-host of Call for Help and CommandN loves people just like me.

At least that's what the shirt says.

Ok, maybe not just like me, but close enough so that I can believe that in a parallel universe where I am not a happily married family man (and I am honey, I truly am) Amber Mac and I make and eat sundaes off of each other's genitals on a regular basis.

Sounds messy, but what are you gonna do? The nerd-lover enjoys her sundaes. At least the one in that other universe does.

And to attest to my criteria-meeting nerdiness, I even have a Lambda-Lambda-Lambda t-shirt to avoid any confusion. And only a real nerd would even know what that means.

CommandN's pretty good this week. Go share in the webcasty goodness. Go. Go Now.

Labels: narcissism, tech

If you haven't heard of CommandN, (what rock have you been under anyway?) its a Canadian made tech show broadcast exclusively for the web, starring Amber Mac, one of the more spectacular examples of why no matter what country you're from, our girls are smarter, cooler AND hotter.

If you're into technology at all, you should go to CommandN, download the latest episode, watch it and then check out all of the recommended links. And then buy a t-shirt.

But if you don't want to take the time to go to CommandN, download the latest episode, watch it and then check out all of the recommended links, and/or buy a t-shirt, have no fear: I've got you covered.

Here are the items you really need to read:

Egg McMuffin-Making Toaster

'Smart' Sippy cup coffee lids

Windows Live and Windows Live Gadgets

Firefox 1.5 beta released

Great show, must watch, and did I mention how cute Amber Mac is?

Labels: tech

So I finally realized what was going on with the Stylecatcher plugin for my recent MT 3.2 upgrade.

I have spent hours frustratedly swearing, trying to figure out what the hell was causing Stylecatcher to line up all of my site content into one column whenever I applied a new style. I finally gave up and settled on a very boring, plain as hell format with the intention to someday manually customize everything to my own tastes.

But earlier today, I was screwing around in my MT admin panel and finally realized that in order to use the Stylecatcher plugin, a base css file has to be installed into a particular directory, referrenced by the output file generated by the plugin, a fact that should have been obvious even to a n00b like me.

Reminds me of all the times that I've told people, in providing tech support, that before they go any further, to first make sure the computer is plugged in.

Anyway, bottom line is now that I've got it working properly, I get to change my site whenever the mood takes me, AND I don't have to screw around manually rewriting my stylesheeet everytime.

Labels: tech

That is the name of a book I'm keeping a lookout for.

Let me know if you come across it, because it turns out that I need it rather badly:

I've been playing with my Movable Type 3.2 upgrade, and every new feature really impresses me.

Except for Stylecatcher, which is supposed to make switching stylesheets as simple as a few mouseclicks, as opposed to the arduous recoding of a css file that used to be required.

But because of some heretofore undiscovered talent for fucking up simple instructions, I cannot change the default (read:ugly) stylesheet that ships with MT without causing all the content to go to one column and generally look like ass.

You'd think that I could at least copy the css file I want and manually overwrite my templated stylesheet right? Nope, even that fucks it up. Must be something with the way I ctrl-v. I hear its all in the wrist.

Anyway, I did manage to find one stylesheet that, with a few minor tweaks, fits into my site nicely.

So this is the new look for the site; learn to like it, because with the huge pain in the ass that changing it will be, its staying the way it is for a long while.

Labels: tech

I have been demoing the new Dreamweaver 8.0 this week, to see if it makes sense to pay for the upgrade. Looks great, I love the native support for stylesheets: The design pane now acts like a live browser instead of showing you default text when using a remote attached stylesheet. Very cool.

But, I have just found my first in-joke. At least I can only assume that this is some programmer's idea of a funny. Maybe it was his last day after getting fired or something.

In case you can't read it, the error reads 'No error occurred', and it comes up right after Dreamweaver has a fatal crash and needs to be restarted.

Kudos to Macromedia for a great product, but I'm going to want to nail this down before I shell out any hard earned cash for the app.

Might have to keep this other pirated copy instead.

Labels: tech

So it turns out that rebuilding my blog didn't take that long after all.

All of my old posts have been plugged back in, and thanks to the new SQL database's backup capabilities, this latest catastrophe shouldn't repeat itself.

But it felt good to go through my old entries as I rebuilt the site, seeing how my writing style has evolved (slowly), browsing through some of my more interesting posts. And some that don't hold up as being interesting at all.

But that's me, warts and all.

Speaking of blogging, I came across a really good faux Tom Cruise blog a few minutes ago, nicely coinciding with a discussion my wife, sister and I had earlier about the lunacies that are both Scientology and that afforementioned actor.

The laughing starts here.

Labels: atheism, tech

So I just finished upgrading to the latest offering of Six Apart's Movable Type, 3.02.

The beta's been out for awhile but I was holding back on upgrading until the official release.

Turns out I should have waited until there was a much handier user manual to go along with it. Ironically, Six Apart boasts a new user manual with the release which reads as ridiculously complicated as the last one.

The upgrade was so smooth and easy in fact, that I ended up deleting my old flatfile database after completely destroying my ftp files during the transition.

Here's a sample of the language I've been using around the house for the last 24 hours:

fuckshitassbaggingmotherbitchingsonofawhore

I throw long incomprehensible strings of swears together when I'm really pissed. I tell Superwife that its better than swearing singly, because Trinity has no chance of one of those babies being her first word.

Anyway, bottom line is after the swearing died down, I gutted my ftp, reinstalled the new version from scratch, lost all of my old comments, entries, & templates.

But I did get it installed. And the upside to this torturous process is that I am now utilizing a SQL database so that the next time I fuck things up this badly I can repair them a lot easier than this time around.

So over the next little while, I'll be rebuilding my entries and putting humpty-dumpty back together again.

On a fun note the new version has some sweet options, most notably StyleCatcher, which allows owners to change the stylesheet for the site in a few clicks rather than the old hand coding we've all spent hours doing. So the new toy will be responsible for the site looking different likely everytime you visit.

I have a thing about changing my environment often, my IM avatars, wallpapers, backgrounds, etc. So even though it doesn't make up for the huge pile of work I have to do to rebuild the site, I'm loving this new plugin. And you have to admit, it looks pretty sharp.

Labels: tech

I stood around various vehicles for three hours tonight being a passive participant of conversations about engines, transmissions, brake lines, etc etc.

There was a great deal of head nodding and uh-huh-ing on my part. Little else.

Nothing like knowing absolutely nothing about a conversation's subject matter to make you feel like a complete dumbass.

I could blame my old man for not teaching me anything about cars, but I can only take that so far. Probably a safe bet that his Dad didn't teach him either.

And there was so much that he didn't teach me that I wouldn't want to waste blame on something I don't really care to know more about.

But I think I'll take every component out of my Dell when I get home and rebuild the fucker from scratch.

Remind myself that I know something about anything.

Labels: tech

Ok. I understand that in terms of time, high speed internet has only been around for what, 5 or 6 years, at least for the average user.

But man is it easy to get completely dependant on it in a short time.

I've been without high-speed for all of 4 days due to a connectivity issue, well really a sons-of-bitches issue, the sons in question being Cogeco Cable, but I digress.

But since I've been relagated to the world of dial-up internet, I've come up with a startling observation: The internet sucks ass at low speeds.

Try uploading a file at 40 Kbps. Or opening a webpage that has a graphic on it. Any graphic at all. Even a small gif. That's pronounced J-I-F btw, for all of you newbs and phonetically challenged. You know who you are.

Seriously I want to know how anyone in the world can get by with only a dial-up connection.

I've been in a state of constant withdrawal for the past 4 days, just jonesing for the ability to check my rss feeds, download a few tunes, or just be able to put in a full days work without ripping my hair out.

So it is sweet relief that I now have high speed again. Although I'm now short one excuse for not blogging daily.

Well, I'll come up with something else as need be.

And I've gotten a few good new names for the wagon since my request.

I'm now adding The Lost Focus and The Anti-Shaggin Wagon (Thanks Scotty) to the list of potentials.

Labels: tech