Yeah, I haven't written in my Journal in a whole year ;-)

Pretty much, not much has changed.

So on the 11th I hit the big 26 mark. However, I'm still a kid at heart. I saw Harry Potter on the 15th and I liked it. I think they could have taken a bit more creative license, but at the same time, it's cool to see how my mental image of things matches up against the directors mental image of things. Some stuff was right on (like the chamber) other things (like what whamping willow) were completely different. Now I'm excited for the new Star Trek movie and the next LOTR flick.

I like the fact that alot of PS2 games are now 20 bucks! I picked up Tekken Tag Tournament on Sunday and played the hell out of it. Now I've just gotta remember all the cool moves. My wife's a buttom masher and she still manaages to pull off these sick combos that usually result in my characters body ending up in some pretzel like configuration on the ground...

Personally, I think tivo is stupid. Mainly because you can't archive the video and the interface sucks ass...

I found a company that makes a product that runs for the PS2 that allows me to play any video file I've got on my PC on my PS2 and output it to my Television. My wife and I are huge invader zim fans , but sitting in front of the computer and attempting to watch invader zim can be a bit uncomfortable... now we can curl up in our comfy bed and watch invader zim instead!!! Once we get setup in our new place with cable and I get the video capture card installed, I'll be able to grab shows, save them on my PC and then watch them in the living room on the TV and get to take advantage of the whole "theater" experience! oh yeah... http://www.broadq.com/

So I went and had my annual cleaning and I didn't have any cavities (horray!!!) My dental health is one of those things that really stresses me out. Currently I'm 25 and I've got as many fillings in my mouth... along with a root canal/crown. I have this nervous feeling that by the time I'm 50, I'll be all crowns. Which would't be that bad except for the whole root canal part. Now granted my first (and only) root canal didn't hurt that bad, (it was one of my quad-cuspid teeth (count 5 back from your two front teeth (the tooth before your first molar)) I still don't like the idea of spending may hours and moocho bucks in the "chair".

I went backpacking a couple of weeks ago and it was awesome. Ended up hiking around in the white moutains by Mt. Tripyramid. This trip with a buddy of mine (wpidalamar on slashdot) was to test our gear and see if we liked our new packs. Though I learned a couple really good things...
1. I packed way too much food!
2. I packed way too much other stuff...
Needless to say, if you've read my profile, my b-day is coming up and my wife has been asking me what I'd like, we'll now she knows... I really need a pack cover. I ended up jerryrigging a trashbag over my pack when it started to rain (more on that!) and I need a new poncho. So yeah, it rained... At first we were like "yeah, its just a sprinkle" but it kept getting harder... When we checked the weather on our way out the door it was "clear with scattered showers" by the time we arrived at the parking lot (unknown to us) it had turned into "showers, heavy at times" so we hiked around and intended on staying the night (we had stayed the night at a different place earlier) we started todo the fun vs. not-so-fun factoring into account and a few other things came into measure as well..
1. we couldn't find a campsite on level ground. We were either in the middle of the logging road, or in a rut.
2. all the level places weren't secluded enough that we felt comfortable dropping our packs and hiking anywhere.

So with that, we decided that it was probably best to call it a day and hike out. All told we did 13 miles (with 40 pound packs) and weren't sore for it. (all in about 6 hours while we took breaks and goofed off)

Totally different topic!!!!

I got my hands on a copy of metroid. I'm a big fan of classic NES games and Metroid tops the list as an all time favorite. I went by a yardsale a couple years ago and bought two top loading NES game machines and a pile of games for 10 bucks! After some cleaning and a bit of work, both of them are in tip top working order! If your like "what the fuck is a top loader" Nintendo actually made two versions of its 8bit nintendo system. The first one was that square box that the cartridge loaded in the front. We all know what a pain in the ass that thing was. Eventually the stupid connector wore out and the nintendo stopped working. The top loader was all the lessons learned from the front loader, plus a healthy dose of K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Stupid) thrown in for good measure. Imagine a Super Nintendo, only smaller but the same overall shape. Since were talking about nintendo here for a moment... Why didn't nintendo ever come out with a Super Nintend o cartridge that would allow you to play regular nintendo games in a super nintendo??? They had a cartridge that would let you play game boy games, but not NES cartridges... That's what kept me from buying a SNES... (plus I got a genesis for christmas the year the NES died...) More on metroid... One thing I find really amazing about that game is the music. I played about 10 minutes this morning before heading out the door and I've still got one of the particular tunes stuck in my head... Anyway, leave some comments on any games you personally like...

So I had insomnia the other night and it was fun. No seriously, it was. Yeah, I did have all the nasty after effects (driving like an old lady on heroine) mumbling, the usual, but it was still fun. You ask why? I'll tell you... Homeworld! A former co-worker friend of mine who my wife and I hang out with on a weekly basis showed me this game a while ago and while I was in Target (pronounced Tarjay ;-)) I picked it up, but my wifes computer wouldn't play it. We'll it would play it, but the zoom feature didn't work, which pretty much makes the game worthless. For those of you who actually read my journal (I know my multitude of fans grows larger by the moment...) Homeworld is a RTS (Real Time Strategy) Space conquest game. Very fun and very time consuming. Time being the operative word here. See, I don't have much of it, time that is. Things tend to be hectic. There are many factors to this, but working full time, plus going to school nights, plus some semblance of a social life does it to you... "it" being you go "shithouse". What precious time I do have, I want to spend it with my wife. So yeah, I sat up all night playing homeworld and it was fun. At one point, the computer had to turn back because it has lost 60% of its ships in my minefields alone, it hadn't even gotten to my Armada. What a great term. I had actually started calling it "Battle group alpha." We (the computer and I) over the course of several hours had several epic show downs, it won a few, but I won the most. Talking to my buddy, I have a couple of better strategies to try out the next time I had insomnia...

I find it utterly amazing how money plays into the decisions of everything. I try to pretend that I'm one of those high minded people who tries not to make decision purely on the basis of cost, but I find working in the tech world it goes that way. A year ago, if you even whispered the "L" word near my boss he'd give you that "Yeah Son, but see were an NT shop and that's the way it is" look. Today he pops into my office and is like, "You know those mail thingy-a-bobs we've got in the lab, what-da think about putting them on linux?" I'm not complaining I just think it's cool. I know that the thingy-a-bob reference just made him sound dumb, but he's not. He's one of those bosses that holds the reins enough that you stay on task, but not so tightly you feel like he's standing on your head or has a key logger attached to your machine. If you want my personal opinion, which your going to get anyway, but I think SUN is fucked like whore at a brothel frequented by the many members of the US Navy. Mainly I say this because my company's (which will remain nameless) IS department has set forth a policy of purging all of our SUN equipment. Now your probably saying, "Yeah So, just cause you are doesn't mean everybody else is" The problem is , well maybe I was a bit harsh on the whore comment, they'll still exist, but at a reduced size. In enviroments like mine I see two things happening, you either jump ship or stick with SUN. The problem I think is that we jumped ship (to HP) and are happier for it, so out goes SUN. So all those sun boxes that were doing unix type jobs (like our internal webserver) are now finding themselves collecting dust. The other problem is the expense of supporting sun hardware from a recuring maintance point of view. Some of the highend old sun hardware can run you into the thousands of dollars a month in maintaince cost. It's pretty hard to justify that when you can have a 4 way linux box do the same thing and the hardware is an 1/8 of the cost. It'a all about the buck...