Entertainment Despair

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I am a self professed gaming junkie. As such I need the proper tools for the job. Last year, the TSA (our friends at the airports) decided to break in two one of my primary tools: the joystick. It just so happens that this joystick isn’t made any more.

To make matters worse, the product in question is from Microsoft. By now everyone should know that Microsoft has more money than anyone, certainly more than the GDP of several industrial nations combined. So why is it that they took a successful product like their joysticks and discontinued them? My bet: they wanted to make it harder for me to play games. Not just anyone, but me specifically.

Guess its time to fire off an email to the guys in Redmond.

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Opting in to spam?

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At a friends’ request, I joined a new site called LinkeIn. It’s about contacts, and reaching out to those people’s contacts in order to do business. Looking a bit harder at the news blurbs about the site (and others like them) I wonder if I’ve just signed up (and sent invites to others) to be seriously spammed.

In general, I believe in the idea that “x degrees of seperation” communities will work. I’m just not sure that they can be all business or all personal any more. I have contacts that I work with daily that are both categories, but I wouldn’t think of asking them to pay for the privledge.

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Home at Last

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I’ve finally made it back to the homestead. The quick summary of this day’s events is as follows:

- 7:20am – Wake up
- 9:08am – Leave Incline Village, NV for home
- 10:00am – Stopped at chain control on highway CA-267
- 2:00pm – Leave the CA/NV border back into NV on highway 50
- 9:18pm – Arrive in San Jose

Time for some sleep.

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Vacation Fun

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I’m sending this quick post from the road in Incline Village (near Tahoe), NV. I’ve just spent the past 3 days skiing until I nearly dropped. Given the ambient temperature (20 F) and the conditions (blinding snow storms and fog) I’ve gotten in some good runs. Pictures to follow later.

In the meantime, enjoy a happy new year. I’ll be crumpled up in a corner somewhere with some Advil :)

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People vs. Robots

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I tried to do something helpful earlier and it backfired on me. In an attempt to cut down on the error messages from the various search engine robots hitting this site I decided to redirect an old directory to this new blog on the home page. Problem is, that breaks other scripts running on the same directory. So now I choose: do I help the robots or help the people?

For now, I choose people, although the logs say that robots outnumber people 8 to 1 on this site. Perhaps someday that trend will reverse and my errors will subside. Until then, no such luck.

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Reconfiguring Woes

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Sometimes getting new computer things is cool. Often its just a big pain, since you have to re-install and re-setup everything from scratch. Today I am living that nightmare over and over again. The worst part about it all is its a disaster of my own making. It could all be prevented by getting off the upgrade treadmill.

I’m a big fan of progress, really. Just not when it requires me to work. :)

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The Holiday Air Travel Problem

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I believe I’ve cracked the code as to the source of my Christmas and Thanksgiving flights to OK disasters: DFW airport. Again today I get to Dallas and I meet up with non helpful gate agents threatening to leave me at the terminal rather than let me board the plane. All because I brough 3 carry ons instead of 2. Happy holidays to you too, wicked witch of the central US!

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Holiday Cheer

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File this one in the “I though Toyota’s were supposed to be reliable” folder.

Last night the “check engine” light came on in the 4Runner. Since I’ve never seen it before I was concerned. I checked all around the engine compartment, looking at hoses, wires, fans, and the like. I looked under the truck for leaks. It all seemed fine.

I took it in to Toyota to have them give it the once over this morning. I get a call barely an hour after I get to work. “Well, there are some problems,” they begin. No, really?

Long story short, at this point in time I’m out at least $1200. Most of that is labor considering they have to crawl around inside the engine area. What happened to the always reliable, never breaks down Toyota mantra? Bah!

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Housework of a different sort

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I spent the last few days assisting some friends of mine work on their house, and I decided to note a few things that are interesting (to me at least):

1. I can still remember how to paint walls w/o wearing as much as I roll on
2. Filling holes and sanding is still not any fun
3. Watch out for bookshelves: some items may shift, could fall, and cause damage to your head
4. Construction dust can and will go everywhere it can, even if you have covers
5. There are never enough hours in the day to get stuff done, nor are there any “on time” schedules or “on budget” projects.

Armed with this information I am now convinced that I should never buy a house, or at least not one that requires so much work. When would I ever have time to sleep?

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Dumb luck

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Some days it just doesn’t pay to get up in the morning. Today I spent all day working on various odd tasks to make up for a day long trip I have tomorrow. As fate would have it, I spent two hours at the end of the work day building a new PC image only to have it completely fail when I bring it home. The kicker? I need it to work for my trip tomorrow. And my flight leaves at 7am. And its coming up on 11pm now.

Can you say no sleep? Sure you can.

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