Qwest finally got around to upgrading my connection like they said they would. According to a test done by dsl reports.com, my connection is now 1270/816 Kb/sec. Everything is nice fast(er) now, except /., but I assume thats a problem on their end. My IP address also seems to have changed. They say that I have a dynamic address, but I've only seen it change whenever I turn off power to the modem, which is almost never.
I'm still dumbfounded as to why they would do this (losing customers to Comcast?), but I guess I shouldn't look the gift horse in the mouth.

I got a note in the mail from my dsl provider, Qwest, saying that if I call them, I can get upgraded to their Super mega deluxe premium package (whatever they call it), at no extra charge. Apparently, the package changes my 780/256kb dsl connection into a 1.5mb/860kb connection.
Of course, while I'm suspicious about it (companies are supposed to be evil, and giving away free stuff is not evil!), I still went ahead and called them and "ordered" it. Whether or not there are any catches attached to it remains to be seen. This may keep me switching to comcast, which I've been pondering doing for a while.


In other completly unrelated news, I see that /. now has republican and democratic topics. I guess it must have came with the politics section...

Just got back from my cousin's wedding. The wedding itself was short, lasting only about 15 minutes. The reception, however, was alot longer. There was some dancing, and I got to learn that I am terribly uncoordinated. It was still fun, though. I won't let looking like a fool stop me from doing anything. :)
I've never been much of a "party person", so dancing is new to me.

It's past midnight now, and after staying up late yesterday night (half life), I am tired and going to sleep now.

In March I bought an ati radeon 9600se for $120. It had an "instant" rebate of $10, and a mail in rebate for $30, and came with a half life 2 cd key, so when that came out, I would get it for free. So in reality, the net cost of the card was $30.

I installed steam (the service seems sorta buggy to me) and started pre-downloading it a few days ago (for some reason the download stopped at 90%, rather than completely finishing, which is weird, but at least it works), and put a few hours into playing it. Overall I like it. It's fun, but the sound gets choppy in a few areas. It also looks like I can get some physical cds of the game shipped out to me for free, so I'm going to do that. The only question is whether I should go with just the regular box, or if I should get a gold edition, which includes strategy guide, and a bunch of other extras. I would still have to pay $40 of the gold editions regular price of $90.

And /. should get a half life section. They already have a quake section.

I got my new motherboard and processor in, install it, and now windows xp refuses to boot. It stops right as it is loading "mup.sys".

From what I've learned from searching the net, other people have this problem, but none of their remedies seem to work for me. I tried updating the bios and uninstalling sp2. So now, I am probably going to have to reinstall the os. Suck.

At least that knoppix cd that I was keeping around is finally getting some use.

Now, will all of you politicians please LEAVE ME ALONE!

I am sick of the phone calls, sick of the political commercials, and sick of being hounded. I wish politicians would have some common sense and stop trying to persuade voters to their side. Everyone who votes can decide on their own. They don't need the propaganda.

I voted for Kerry. Why? Not because I like him. I voted for Kerry because I think he won't drive the deficit up any higher than it already is. Seven trillion dollars is way too much, IMHO.


...In other news, I decided to that it is time to upgrade my computer. Once the shipment arrives from newegg, I will (barring any product defects) be the proud new owner of an athlon xp 3000+. I just hope it lasts as long as my last processor. I also had to upgrade ram, because a motherboard that supports sdr isn't available for some reason. If anyone is looking for some sdr ram (512 or 256 meg), email me.

And just as I finish this up, the phone starts ringing. Ugh.

I think I might have made some enemies today. The cops showed up, telling me that someone called them up and told them that I was making to much noise. They told me that testing my new sound system is not a valid excuse.
Oh well. They didn't actually do anything other than warn me and then leave.

From newegg.com, I got some new speakers , sound card, case, and cd writer (only $20 for 52*32*52).
The speakers are good, but there is a small hiss that I'm going to have to look into. The rear speakers don't work when playing music with winamp. Going to have to fix that too.

Tomorrow, I'm going to go into the attic and try to lay some cord throught the ceiling so I can have the rear speakers in the upper corners of the room. I'm going to have to figure out what to do for breathing, because last time I was up there, all of the dust from the insulation made me sick, and I had trouble breathing for a while. I almost passed out from all of the coffing while I was up there, which would not have been a good thing.

How great it is to be back to the college life! /joke. I finally went to go get the books that I should have gotten a week ago, only to find out that most of them were back ordered, sold out, etc. The one course book that I was able to get cost me $90. I'm gonna have to do this online next semester so that I can hopefully get better deals on these things. While I was at the bookstore, I also got The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which I have never read before, though I have seen the movies. Hopefully it will be good. There was also another book that I saw which tells more of the setting of the story and the weapons that the characters used and has alot of other information, but I cant remember what it was called. It seemed like a pretty cool addendum to the LotR, but I decided that I could always get it later if I like the LotR.

Finally got to go hot air ballooning today. Haven't done that for at least a year or two. It was fun and I managed to get a lot of good pictures, which is hard to do when you are busy setting up the balloon.
The balloon is called "Forever Grateful". Here is a (photoshopped) pic of the balloon. The only downside of hot air ballooning is that you have to wake up so early to be there on time. Now, time for a nap.