When StarCraft II came out I bought it. Unfortunately I didn't play for too long. My machine could barely run it. As I progressed through the campaign it became increasingly laggy as the scenarios became more complex. There were also some fundamental changes to gameplay that I didn't care for. I never liked the missions where I didn't build a base but instead followed a path, picking up a few units here and there. There were these along with missions that were very time oriented and you have to constantly hurry. So I stopped playing.
I was sitting last night, just relaxing, and thought - that Macbook pro I just got is pretty beefy. I wonder what good games are around for Mac. I was looking at some lists, realized when I saw SC2 on one that I already owned it - and installed it on my machine. I've been watching a lot of SC2 matches on youtube. I'm a HuskyStarcraft fan. That's gotten me to thinking about playing some on battlenet. I know I'll never be that good - but especially after watching his Bronze League Heroes casts, I think I could still have fun. It seems I have a better chance of getting matched up with people closer to me in ability than I did with the old original StarCraft.
Very recently my Fedora machine stopped booting to the graphic login. It would be humming along, I'd see my little "f" appear, then I'd drop back to a text list of boot up events and it would just sit there. I could hop over to another tty and log in and then startx and log into KDE.
I've been busy so I didn't have time to try and figure it out. Today I finally could do a little research. I found stuff like this and this. There was a lot of other stuff too - but what I couldn't find is a single explanation of just what is going on that I could understand. I hate changing stuff in my system without knowing why I'm doing it or exactly what it is I'm doing.
In this case a quick "mv
Very clever. I approve.
today is april first, and while bing and google have jokes up, i haven't seen a single april fools on the main page. i realize in years past they have done nothing but april fools and that was unpopular but seriously not even a token link to google or bing?
Wont say what site or where - but I'm working on migrating something that was hosted in one of our offices to a shared hosting environment.
They had everything you can imagine copied into the site folder so I'm working through and removing stuff I don't need to upload to the new host. I find a directory that has phpmyadmin stuff in it. On a whim I pull up the production site in my browser and head over to that folder - logs me in automatically and I can browse all tables in the db. Just told the new ops director and I think he might pop a few veins.
I am currently using a Moto G as my primary phone for a bit. I brought it with me to Moscow. As soon as I got here I started getting "Emergency Alerts" like crazy. I think I had 40 or so the first afternoon.
So I googled it and found out about a US system for this kind of thing. I also found out how to turn it off. I couldn't find any info. on an equivalent Russian system. Whatever is making it happen, I can't read them. I just see random characters on my phone. Maybe if I used Russian the characters would render properly - dunno.
Anyway it's so odd that I thought I would mention it.
This is the Voice of Freedom broadcasting from somewhere in MagyarorszÃg.
I'm exhausted - should have never gotten the CBS NCAA tourney feed working at home. Slept 2 hours this morning. Fly to Moscow Wed a.m. dark and early. Life is hectic and I just keep looking at April 6th and telling myself I just have to make it that far.
I'm being melodramatic but this next couple weeks will be rough. Last week was superb - I'll post a write up later.
Pax
I havenÂt been here for years!
Whassup?
Picked up my new 13" Retina Macbook Pro ( not the same as a plane Macbook Pro - these guys are so good at marketing.) I've been using it for two weeks. I'm learning.
My favorite surprise was when I opened up the terminal app and started trying out commands. Everything was working so I went to see what environment I was in and saw that it was bash. This made me very happy.
I think on the gui end it is o.k. I prefer but I'm getting use to the way OS X wants me to do things. I've had to learn some weird gestures to get at what I want quickly.
Here are some of the issues so far. Installing software sucks. It comes in different file formats and how it gets done varies wildly based on where I get it from. It's confusing as all get out. Without a package manager I guess updates will be on a per software basis and apparently uninstalling means removing the program and then hunting down any bits it leaves behind. That's pretty idiotic. I had a hard core Mac guy try to explain to me why this was better.
There is this gigantic track pad below my keyboard and I wouldn't care if palm detection or whatever you want to call it worked better. As I type this the window is scrolling up and down as my hands periodically bump into the track pad. So far I can't find a setting that lets me try to fix this sorry state of affairs. This is my big issue with the lack of options. If things work correctly it's fine. If they don't, you are just hosed. And it never works correctly as much as the people who make these things think it will.
Battery life on all Apple products I've interacted with lately is just flat out impressive. This laptop is no exception.
It's the most expensive laptop I've ever owned. That changes my whole approach to how I travel with it. I have to be a lot more careful. I didn't realize how much I appreciated not worrying about my $400 Acer so much. This is more on me I guess but it's still a function of the machine. I do appreciate that full disk encryption is now a part of the OS. This puts it ahead of windows and helps it catch up with Linux a bit.
When Mac people are explaining some amazing feature to me that I've been using in KDE for years and years I do chuckle a little inside. Virtual desktops for example.
Multimonitor support is weak. It doesn't work as well as it does on my Win 7 machine. I don't think I'm alone in this. When I go to conferences it's a pretty steady stream of guys coming up to present and plugging their machines into the projector. It's the Mac guys that have the most trouble.
Speaking of that - my life was increasingly becoming dongle/incompatible power cord free. Apple just set me back quite a few years as I am not back to carrying around a bunch of wire and related junk that all just do one thing for one machine. I am not a fan of that whole mess.
It's very early on. I may end up turning into a true believer. Or maybe I'll have better options by the time I'm ready for a new machine. I'd love something with this build quality that ran Fedora well.
The fact that slashboxes have stopped working and I didn't see links for writing journals in the beta has me thinking that the site will move away from the level of personalization that it had before. So I'm thinking through what I'll do as a replacement. The idea I keep coming back to is I may go ahead and use a subreddit as my new journal. It would be a place I could post - people could follow it and respond if they were interested. It's possible to set one up so that people can read and comment but they can't submit posts themselves - basically what the slashdot journal is.
That seems the easiest. I have my blog too - but I've always liked having a 'spot' that is part of something bigger where I can post like this.
the main point of the movie is that companies are offshoring profits to avoid the 35% corporate tax rate, and that so called laws to get the money back in the usa don't create jobs but rather let companies reward the people at the top and cut jobs drastically.
companies including bailout companies from 2001-2011 have over 2.4 trillion dollars off shore. most of that money has 0% taxrate and can never return to the USA, except on 'tax holidays' which generally allow for as little as 5% tax rate. and it is all legal. sick it is so sick. republicans have forced through huge benefit cuts under the notion that america is broke. no americas tax laws are broken, and so are many other places including the uk. http://www.usuncut.org/
n/t
I appear to be in the market for a new KVM as my current one has all but stopped working. Any recommendations? Minimum 4 outputs. *Must* do VGA. My current one has mini-DIN for keyboard and mouse, which has sort of worked some of the time with USB-PS2 converters. I could probably go for a full USB only one, but I'd need to get new cables.
If I were the Ukraine, I'd sink my ships and block the Russian port right now.
Better than surrendering and there's nothing the Russians can do after that. The port becomes disabled for months.
Just ask the Japanese.
Life is a healthy respect for mother nature laced with greed.