I’m not dead… yet.

Jeez, it’s been 4 months since my last post.  I need to start posting more. Post.Toasties. 

rrod

rrod

Originally uploaded by okiegeek.

Another one bites the dust…

I miss the good ol’ days!

Anyone else remember the days of the BBS?  You know, that pre-internet message board where you connected at 56k or less, probably knew most of the people who posted there (because it was most likely hosted in your town and was a local call,) and would occasionally meet, in person even, and hang out (Ah, Darknet / Ghotinet…  I remember you well!) 

Does anyone also remember the “understood ettiquette” that went along with being on a BBS?  Stuff such as:

1.) Staying on topic in a message thread.

2.) No flame wars (unless the message thread/area was intended for that.)

3.) Using (mostly) correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

4.) Making appropriate replies to messages.

:::sigh:::  Seems as if most of the above has been lost regarding modern message forums.  Sure, there were always people who thought they were better than others, and there were people who were just plain a-holes, but by and large, it was a much more civilized messaging experience. 

When I read through message forums now (specifically majornelson.com, 1up.com, joystiq.com) I’m reminded of just how terrified I am of living in my old age when these people are running the country.  :::shudder:::

Update

Well, it’s been a month since my last update.  Have had a lot going on, so I’ll recap.

My grandfather died a couple of weeks ago.  I spent most of my Friday nights for almost three years staying the night with him, helping him get into bed and up the next day.  In that time, I got to know him in a way that I otherwise wouldn’t have, so for that, I’m thankful.  As anyone who has seen a family member’s health deteriorate before their eyes can tell you, it’s a difficult thing to watch.  The rest of the family tells me that my staying with him was a blessing to him, but I tend to think that getting to spend time with him like I did was a blessing to me.  He was a kind, generous man.  I can’t imagine he ever had any enemies.  He was a consumate giver – I only hope I can be half the man that he was.

Otherwise, life, work, and love are good.  Getting excited about Christmas and spending time with my friends and family.  Bring on the snow!

My latest obsession: Geocaching

I’ve been out geocaching lately… basically, a high tech cross between a scavenger hunt, hide-n-seek, and hunting for pirates’ treasure. Using a GPS, you track a set of coordinates and find the “cache,” some type of container that may contain anything from trinkets to a sign-in log only. Lots of fun, and another excuse to get outdoors.

Check out the geocaching website HERE.

Woot!

Well, another occurance of the “friend factor” influencing one’s success with video games.  Robn and I have talked about the phenomenon where you play the same level in a game over and over and over without success, and then suddenly have success at it when a friend is either a.) sitting there watching you play or b.) on their way over to your house to hang out.  Robn has specifically waited until a friend was on his way over to fire up a game so that he could get past a level he’s been stuck on for a while.

Well, it happened to me tonight.  I was able to finally complete the last 2 offline races in Burnout Revenge on my 360 while Robn sat on the couch watching. 

Woot!

Only 6 more “Signature Takedowns” and the entire offline portion of the game is done! Stay tuned!

54 Seconds of Pure Frustration…

Addendum: Well, on my 93rd attempt, I finished the Motor City Short Reverse track with .17 seconds to spare and an “Awesome” rating.

You think I’m a bit competitive? ;)

Burnout Revenge was the first game I bought for my XBox 360 and I’ve spend a considerable amount of time trying to “beat” the game.  So far, I’ve completed 95% of it and have 7 6 more “stars” to go until the offline portion is completed.  For those of you who have played the game, you know what the stars are for.  For those uninitiated, each race has up to five stars you can achieve.  Up to four stars are awarded for your aggression level (i.e. taking out traffic, catching air, drifting, taking down your opponents, etc.) and the fifth is awarded for getting a Gold medal in that particular race. 

More reasons why the PS3 will suck…

Here’s an interesting article slamming the upcoming PS3.  (Thanks Major Nelson for the heads-up.)

Despite my love for my 360, I think Sony will outsell the 360 simply because it’s a bargain-priced Blu-Ray player (oh yeah, and it happens to be capable of playing games.)

The strength of Sony’s games roster has been weakened with the loss of the ever-Sony-exclusive Grand Theft Auto.  The new Metal Gear and Gran Turismo will probably sell well, but I doubt they’ll outdo Halo 3 and Gears of War. 

E3 – R.I.P.

Well, it appears that E3, the Electronics Entertainment Expo, is dead.  Something about cost vs. return for the participants was out of kilter.

Check out the story on Joystiq here.

Looks like I fell victim to the rumor mill.  40 lashings for me.

Trying Linux again… :::sigh:::

Will I ever learn?

I was reading a thread about how OpenSuSE 10.1 is buggy as hell, particularly when it comes to installing the bootloader (duh!) A few people had said that 10.0 was a much more stable release, so I fired up the bit torrent client and grabbed the OpenSuSE 10.0 .iso file. 

Got it installed, and indeed, it wrote the bootloader without an incident.  Played around in it for awhile, but really wanted to go to 10.1 so I could reinstall XGL, so I did the update routine with a bit of trepidation.  Amazingly, everything worked just fine and I got XGL working again.

Only, after getting XGL working, I was unable to launch Firefox from the desktop shortcut.  Jeez – is anything going to go correctly when it comes to Linux?