Ranting

Number 38

Well, I spent the majority of last night downloading all 650 MB of S*m C*ty 4, which means I get to spend the majority of tonight finding a ser*al number, which is proving to be much harder. The things I do to save $49.99 plus shipping.

Rabbit seams to have grown in 3 days, weird. Its annoying, mom always wants me to feed it and whatever. IT’S NOT MINE! Gah, not like I know what a rabbit wants. I owned a snapping turtle, my view of baby rabbits is about 2 weeks of food I don’t need to buy.

Only 2 days till my birthday. It was suggested to me that I go sit in a bar at 11 tomorrow night, wait for 12, and order something right away. What bar is open and serving at midnight on a Sunday? I’m sure there out there, but why go there? I have the rest of my life to drink whatever I want, the fact that you can’t doesn’t mean I have to. Seriously though, only a bit over 24 hours, how cool. So I know your all thinking “Man, 24 hours, what will I get?” Well, A good starter is the Sunday papers. Anything from OfficeMax, Staples, Best Buy, or Circuit City thats at least $25 will probably be good. If nothing else, its worth $25 when I return it. Seriously though, there isn’t much I ask for:

Apple Airport Card $79 ($71 for students)
512Mb PC133 1.25″ SO-DIMM $95 (depends where you go)
Coke, or Pepsi (I actually want it now though, not Monday)
A ser*al number for S*m C*ty 4 for mac
Any of the books on my Amazon.com WishList, if you go there there’s some way for you to look at my list, pick something, and have it shipped to me, look around.

Thats about it. Of course, I always accept cash.

And, funny of the week, from Apple’s Mac OS X Panther site:

Unix-lover Heaven
Panther will include a final X11 window server for Unix-based apps, improved NFS/UFS, FreeBSD 5 innovations as well as support for popular Linux APIs, IPv6 and other important acronyms.

Other important acronyms? Is that a technical term? The heck?

Anyway, moving on…

Still no ser*al number. Keep finding them for Windows version too, which seems to have different ser*als. I also learned tonight that I need a ser*al for iblog, as my 30 days seem to be up. For all I know, this wont even post.

Ok, enough for now, I got stuff to do. Need to get back on a normal sleep schedule for school. All 2 days of it.

Night ya’all
nick

…Nope, wont post. Hmm, how to get $19.95 to an Indian bank account at 11:33 on Saturday night, when you ain’t got the money on your credit card. Hmm. Guess I go watch SNL and figure it out at 1.

…Well, its about 8:27:53 right now (well, I guess not “about”) and still no iblog. Tomorrow though the money will be on my credit card. I want to blame it on Lifli for making me pay, but I knew it was $20 and didn’t pay when I could have. Crazy part: Says the program costs $19.95, WRONG! Actually, since developer is in India, it costs 950 Rupees. So with exchange rates as of last night, it really costs $20.79. Now $0.84 isn’t a big deal, but I would like to know about it. Rupees, hah!

My birthday is closer, just two and a half hours. Mom is at casino, the Sunday nearest my birthday seems to be lucky.

Jason was looking at a CD-ROM for his PowerBook 1400, and we found one that’s “Certified Pre-Owned.” The seller guarantees that if you ever find that the CD-ROM was not owned by someone before you, he will give you double your money back. I laughed like hell seeing it, it’s a funny gimmick, I give it that.

I downloaded S*mC*ty 4, which I’ve been searching for for weeks (weird to say “for for”). So I get it downloaded, go to install, and “Please enter your password.” Crap, ok, online for a password. Find one on a website finally, has been about 24 hours since I started download at this point. So enter password, instal commences, and half way through “Please enter disk 2.” Crap crap crap crap crap. Still haven’t found a S*m C*ty 4 disk 2 for Mac. Bastards. I was googling for some info on it, and found a forum where the reviews are “mixed.” Every thing from “My G4 400MHz with 256MB of RAM runs SC4 fine” to “My G4 dual 1.42GHz with 1.5GB RAM chokes on the piece.” Don’t recall anyone with specifics on trying it on a G3, so who knows what my results will be. Definitely not shelling out $50 with results like that though.

Well, school tomorrow, and IBEW test, and birthday, so need sleep. That wont be for probably 2 hours, at least. Oh well.

I do plan to post as normal on Tuesday, and will add to this before I post it. You should be able to read this on Monday though. Weird to write stuff knowing nobody will see it for another day, screws with the “relative dates.” By the time you read this “tomorrow” will be Wednesday and “Today” will be gone. Time is a funny thing.

Ok, adios,
nick

…Ok, 9:44 Monday night. Apple released new imacs and ipods today, but wont bore you with specs, just check apples webpage.

Most un-eventful birthday in history, especially for a 21st. I’m not complaining though, not one for a big party anyway. Woke up this morning to “Good morning, happy birthday, I think rabbit is dead.” It was. Was too young, needed mom’s milk and we couldn’t give it. Wild animal’s should be left in the wild.

Started Unix today, bit disappointed. Working on Windows machines, just logging into a unix server. Oh well. Will see how Obj. Oriented C++ goes tomorrow.

And most important, I PAID FOR IBLOG!!! Which is why you can see this.

Update tomorrow, like it should be.

Bye for the third time,
nick

32

Number 32, wow. First post was May 27th, so almost 3 months. Only 2 more posts here though, then the move.

I realized today that I only have about a week left before school starts. Granted, most of you are already back in school, but hey. This year shouldn’t be too bad, only taking 8 credit hours, and there not that hard of classes.

Cable modem is still hovering in the 1.8 MBit/s range, although it was outright down most of today, last night, and a while saturday too. Stupid asses at Charter couldn’t fix your connection if it were just an unplugged ethernet cable. They say “It’s probably the router, try connecting a computer directly to the modem.” Well, if you shitheads ever get around to erasing my MAC addresses off your server so it doesn’t think were supposed to be in Essexville, then that would work, but for now I can’t. FOUR MONTHS, AND THEY STILL HAVEN’T ERASED OUR MAC ADDRESSES, FOUR MONTHS! And it cant be the router, because its been hooked up and working fine for over a month now. If Charter would hire people who have an IQ higher than their age, we wouldn’t have this problem. Tech support shouldn’t consist of a bunch of no-brains reading the troubleshooting manual from the computer in front of them, a 5 year old can do that. And when I told them I didn’t have a Charter modem, that I bought my own, he claimed that other modems don’t work with the system, and that was my problem, HAH! Idiots. He also said that my speed tests were in-acurate and there is no way I’m running at 1.8MB s, and the modem was only configured at 768k. Well, 5 different test, including 2 of Charters, all say I’m between 1.68 and 1.85 MB/s. And, the cable modems status page says I’m configured for 2,000,000 bps, so nearly 2.0MB/s. Idiots, freaking idiots.

Anyway, I think thats it. Good luck in school this year! See you thursday for 33rd post, then Sunday for 34th and final on this blog. I will put a link to new site on the last entry for all you who don’t know where its moving. Or you can just click the link to my homepage at the right.

later,
nick

The Macs are Back

Yep, Best Buy has macs again. They have been going on and off their website all week, but it seems they will now stay. They are also available at a few stores (not ours) and are to be featured in “several ads” as of tomorrow, not known yet if this means weekly circular or on-line ads though. Currently, the website lists emacs, imacs, ibooks, and powerbooks, plus keyboards, mice, and displays. Interesting note: Apple displays use a proprietary ADC jack for connection, that carries power, USB, and DVI signal to the monitor, but only the PowerMac carries this jack. The only other mac capable of connecting to an ADC display is the PowerBook 15″ and 17″, which have DVI output but require an adapter for ADC. So Best Buy sells the displays, and the PowerBooks, but not the adapter, and no PowerMacs, making the displays unusable. Perhaps they are waiting for the G5 to sell Powermacs. We will need to wait and see.

Ok, went to a bon-fire last night and was ravaged by mosquitos. I look like I have a disease or something now. Mom keeps yelling “put this on,””put that on”. “It’s not working woman!!!!!” All that brings relief is itching, but there are too many!

I made it to 4 days, 3 hours before restarting. At about the 4 day mark though, a glitch in the finder made dragging stop. For some reason, when I clicked an icon and tried to drag it, it didn’t move. Fiddled with stuff for a while, but finally gave in and restarted. At 5 days 7 hours 31 minutes now (11:40 pm).

Yesterday our cable modem was running rather slow for a while, as was several peoples I hear. So at around 8 pm I was downloading a file and got this insane download speed, and was really freaked out. Ran a speed test at DSLReports.com and got this. Yes, 1.8 MBit, on a 768 kbit line. Thats more than double our standard speed. Heck, Charter only offers up to 1.5 MBit to consumers. It (sadly) returned to normal after about an hour.

Well, can’t think of anything else. Guess I will talk to you all tuesday at blog #27.

nick

Why aren’t you people buying my stuff?!

Aghhh!

Life sucks. You can never do anything up to anyone else’s standards, but if you quit trying you just get it worse. You can do anything and everything they want, and even more, but they can always find a fault. It’s useless to clean your room, because the door is closed, so who notices, even if it took all day. And if they tell you “dont worry about the …”, that better be the first thing you do, or you better stay far from it. Depends on their mood, and you’re a mind reader to know, because you’re “perfect like them”.

Sorry, bad day, well, bad 15 minutes, but enough crap for about a week.

This is number 25, might be a milestone or something. Don’t seem to do well at those though, so we will forgo anything special.

Working on getting bedroom in order, now that all the little people are gone. Have been trying to do this since we moved in in what, april? Good luck, huh… Not going too bad really. Just need to press on I guess.

Ok, you all go enjoy your busy little lives, with your happy little families. I’ll just sit here in hell and wait to die. Don’t mind me, I can take it, I hope.

Horribly depressed,
nick

Don’t kick a gift horse in the mouth.
It’s senseless, you’ll never tenderize that thing.

DAMN IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BASTARDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just sat here writing for 20 minutes, and POOF!

Its gone!!

Here’s the just of it, because I’m lazy:

1) Why am I still Up?

2) Got a wifi AP, if you want to try it let me know, as I have no 802.11b card to try it with. Try wifimaps.com, 5 on west side, 1 on east side.

3) Uncle leaves in about an hour, leaving kids for 2 weeks. Hope Danielle comes with him to pick boys up, would like to see her. They want me to go with in 2 weeks, I dont want to, variety of reasons.

4) Apple edu discounts, BIG price drops.

5) BUY MY STUFF

And thats about where it all disappeared, page reloaded and form was blank. Yeah, that was in there too, am on blogger form because I was too lazy to open KungLog. That will show me, huh.

Ok, thats all. I don’t feel bad about leaving a small post, because this is just a boredom update. Do feel bad about losing the post, as it was pretty good. See you Monday night.

nick

The G5

Well, I was late. I have a good reason though, several in fact, and here they are:

Yes, its coming. The leaked specs were all true too. Up to dual 2.0Ghz 64 bit PowerPC 970 processors, up to 8 GB of DDR RAM on an 8GB/s bus, 3 PCI-X slots, an AGP 8x Pro slot, Serial ATA, Firewire 400 and 800, USB 2.0, an external Wi-Fi antenna port, optical and analog audio in and out, and more. All this for $2999, or just $1999 for the single 1.6Ghz. Plus, the preview of Panther, Mac OS X 10.3. This too will be an exciting release, as it sports 100 new features. Panther will be available by year end, and the G5 by august. AND, a new version of ichat, and a new $149 firewire webcam.

I was rather tired last night after all of that, and then I was in Caseville today delaying the update further. But here it is, so there you go.

What else, uhm, the website. I haven’t worked on it in a few weeks now, so figure I minds as well just post what I have, including some new pics. Should be up soon, hopefully before next post, you’ll read why. So there is that.

Also, I am now counting down to my massive 1 month super-fantastic-over-hyphinated-gala-o-rama-celebration. And, this is the 10th update, making it an extravaganza itself. The 1 month anniversary will be on the 27th, 3 days for now. So, I am not going to correct the schedule, but instead leave it to its now altered state so that there will be a post on the big day. Was it a coincidence that this happened, or was it planned? You may never know, unless you read the next sentence. It was a coincidence, I actually just realized it.

And finally, I need to complain about something. Hmm, I wonder what (sarcasm, so hard in writing). The G5. You should see it. IT IS THE UGLIEST COMPUTER APPLE HAS EVER MADE. Seriously though, the sides are not all that bad, and the back isnt so bad either, but the front, eghh. Its just so, well, plainishly ugly. I dont know, I just think the case needs some more work. Also, it only has room for 1 optical and 2 HD bays. The Quicksilver had 4 HDs, and optical, and a zip and the Mirriored Drive Doors had 4 HDs and 2 opticals. The Industrial Design Group needs to get their stuff together and go back to work.

Ok, thats it then, go away until the big party.

nick

Is it that time again?

I was sitting here and I thought “I think it’s blog night.” Actually, I didn’t think it, I IM’d it to Jason. And I didn’t have the ‘ in it’s, since I don’t use much punctuation in IMs, but you get the point.

I just got done watching “the Recruit” and it was pretty good. My cousin fell asleep when he watched it, and so did my mom, but I thought it was good. Al Pacino was perfect for the roll. Colin Farrell, well, he’s a great actor and all, but he just seems so much like a Brad Pitt clone, or at least a fraternal twin.

Going back to that opening, I am reminded of seventh grade. Mrs. Coates class, and those free writes. Suchyta is the only person that will really remember them, since he’s the only person who reads this thing that was in the class, but they were great. He even helped me in writing a few of them. I wish I knew where they are. “The Sock” and “Untitled tale of the Porta-Potty guys” (yes, I know thats a title, just shut-up), I dedicate this post to you, wherever you are.

I missed the SMUG meeting this past Thursday. I normally go every other month, but decided they suck too much to go again. Ohh well, maybe they will improve sometime.

I would like now to express my newest bitch (I know, its like a regular column in my rant). ichat, Apple’s AIM client, seems to have a major flaw (other than not sending links right). When I put up an away message, nobody gets it! If you click my name in AIM, and then do the info thing, it will display the message. And if you look next to my name in ichat it will display. But, if you message me, it doesn’t send the message. Instead, it just sits there as if I am too rude to answer, and I feel kinda bad, but am trying to re-focus that as rage at Apple. Maybe in the new version it will be fixed.

Delta canceled one of my classes. CST-126, Network Cabling and Media, doesn’t it just sound easy? A class about running network cable? Ohh well, maybe in the winter semester. For now, I need to find a 4 credit course for fall.

Ok, later…
nick

Cellphone Complaints

Well, here we are again. Its been 3 days so time for another update. Actually, for the first time I almost posted early, on Sunday, but decided not to.

Anyway, first on the agenda this time is you people. That I know of there are 7 of you people so far, but who knows how many there really are? Well, I suppose that blogger knows, they could just count the IP addresses that have requested the page. But getting to the point, I would like to know how many of you there really are, so I am going to try to set up a guest book or something, or maybe some way for you to just reply to the posts. Honestly, I don’t know how to know for sure other than requiring that you ask for a password to view the blog, and that would suck so it’s not going to happen. We’ll see.

Next up is, uhm, I forgot. My dog just walked up and tried playing and I lost whatever thought it was I had. Ohh, my website. I have a new one in the works, as I said in the last post I think, and its going better. There was more, but I’m not remembering it.

This week I am upset at cellphone companies. It seems that the cellphone I want is not in production. The closest I have seen is the Motorola t270 (no not the new 720, the 270) which was discontinued. It’s a no frills simple cellphone, similar to the current v120 except it can accept a bluetooth adapter. Yes there are bluetooth phones out, but they are nearly all Sony-Ericssons and only work on GSM networks, which suck. The t270 however was for CDMA, which is good. Hopefully later this summer when Motorola releases their new phones they will come out with something to my liking.

I am also upset at the carriers, for charging up the ass. You need to either sign a crappy contract or pay nearly MSRP for the phone, you end up paying either $.50 a minute or getting a plan with more time than you actually need, and you cant get the phone you want because it doesn’t seem to exist. And by the way, what good are unlimited night and weekend minutes if you need to spend them on the phone?

Ok, so what is the point? I’m not even sure but I think it has to do with me NOT getting a cellphone. At least not for a while. I see too many problems with a cellphone right now, and have many other things that I actually NEED or that I simply want more. Things like my car insurance, paying off the loan for my ibook, getting an airport card, and a few books I want to name a few. And yes, if you would like to donate, I will be happy to accept. Please e-mail or IM me for specifics.

Well, I think thats it for now. Remember to read crazyapplerumors.com because it is always hilarious, and I will be back in 3 days. And, if I get the urge to post sooner, I will do it this time (which probably means it will end up being MORE than 3 days this time).

Until next time,
nick

Bad Apple, BAD

Ok, I am bored and not ready to sleep yet so here is your update.

I am ROYALY ticked at Apple right now (when am I not right? I hate them almost as much as I love them). They released isync 1.1 today which added syncing support for several more cellphones, which is really cool. However, they DIDN’T provide support for phones people actually own. isync is still dominated by GSM phones, which are the vast minority in the US. And the CDMA and TDMA phones they are supporting are the $249 optional phones that nobody buys. Yo Apple, get a clue and support the Motorola v120, you know the one that Verizon and Alltel give away for free and that most people have (and is also the one I am getting, why else would I care?).

Second, they dropped the price of 12″ and 15″ powerbooks AND started a promotion where you can get a $200 rebate when you buy any mac with an ipod. That means rather than spending $1549 on my ibook, I could have waited and got a 12″ AlBook with a faster processor and G4, more RAM, a bigger HD, and Airport Extreme plus a 10 gig ipod for $1649. I could have waited 6 months for a deal like that. But I digress. Part of buying a computer is accepting that it wont be the latest and greatest forever, or even for much more that a few weeks. That my ibook wasn’t leapfrogged until mid-last month is actually amazing. Besides, I need to focus my hatred at RAM chip makers for charging so much. How can a 512mb so-dimm cost $99 when a 512DDR is only $75 anyway!?!

What else? I don’t know. I didn’t say I wasn’t tired, just not tired enough to sleep. Ok, I am going to bed know, 3 hours earlier than normal, because I am tired and I am supposed to work tomorrow.

Later,
nick