Scattered Thoughts

So this weekend, I went on a fantasy game-buying spree…
…more about that after the weekend update.

First something I need your help with. I deleted a lot of files off of scatteredthoughts.org that I think are old or whatever. If you're browsing around this site and notice something not working the way it used to (i.e. the spotlight search or whatever), please let me know. I do have an offline copy of all the files I deleted that I'm going to keep until I'm comfortable none of them are needed.

Now on to the Monday Update.

This weekend was nice and relaxing. Friday was the usual Happy Hourness. It was ok even though we couldn't sit in the same location as usual. Friday night, Erin came over and we hung out, but that was about it.

Saturday I went to Columbus to see Laura in her Solo & Ensemble contest and to see my parents. She ended up getting a second on the performance, but that's about what I expected after hearing it. We went to lunch at Chili's, which is going to be my birthday meal since I won't see them until after my birthday. I then got convinced to go to Shelbyville to help fix some computer problems. Apparently my parents hard-reset the router, and in doing so confused their computers. My mom also downloaded some patch from Microsoft for our Lexmark printer. Yea… I just said that… a Microsoft patch for our Lexmark printer. So I ended up having to fix what Microsoft "fixed". I find myself doing that more and more often lately… Whatever.

Saturday night, I picked Erin up from a gathering she went to and subsequently got upset at, but for more details, you'll have to check out her blog.

Sunday, after waking up, I watched the basketball game, which was a disappointment. I don't understand why we always loose to Minnesota. That's all I did. Erin came over to hang out after her BRBB rehearsal.

If you're reading that and thinking "There's a lot of downtime in there," you'd be wrong. There is a lot of World of Warcraft in there. I went on a fantasy game-buying spree, like I mentioned above. For my birthday, I purchased my own copy of World of Warcraft so I can stop leeching Will's account. I also bought my own copy of Fable for the Xbox so I don't have to rent it anymore when I want to play it. So yea, I've joined the ranks of the uber-dorks. I've been playing WoW for two days and I've worked my way up to a level 12 Night Elf Warrior. I play on Dark Iron; so if you want to join, look up Rootusair. When Dark Iron is down, I'll be on Sen'Jin as an Orc Warlock named Thusair. Yea, needless to say, I'm addicted to the game.

Fable is Fable. I've played it before and enjoy playing it when I don't have to think about something. It's pretty linear, hence the not thinking.

I think that's about all I want to write right now. I'm hungry and Will and I are going to get some food. Then I might play more WoW, or I'll just hang out. Either way, this post is over.

The End-of-the-Blog Rundown

Song of the Day — Rainy Day Woman — Bob Dylan

Quote of the Day — :Erin hands me her purse: Me: "But it doesn't match my shoes…" Erin: "Wow, you said something funny!"

Today's Moment of Bliss — Ossama Bin Laden has a book list, and one of the books is #32 on the Amazon.com top seller's list. It was 52 earlier this week. How can he recommend books when he's hiding out in a cave in Afghanistan?

Hero of the Day — Jimi and Will for making my adjustment to WoW easier.

Current Mood — — Hungry!

Until the next post…

Well, it's Thursday, which means I update, but I don't have much to say today…

I've updated like mad on the Sideblog. Mostly things I found on Digg, but there are a couple updates there not from Digg but related to stories that ended up there. I've also found a Podcast that I enjoy listening to… a lot. It's Senator Barack Obama's Weekly Podcast. I've also discovered a couple video podcasts that I'm going to start watching as often as they are updated: TikiBar TV and Ask a Ninja.

TikiBar TV is a comedy podcast that needs some work. From what I can gather; three friends sit around, get drunk in their living room then answer fan mail. It has its moments, some of them are hilarious, but for the most part… they need some work. — yea, 2.5 stars for them.

Ask a Ninja is freakin hilarious. A guy wrapped in black cloth — "the ninja" — answers ridiculous questions asked in the form of email. The guy is hilarious, I give it . The only way it could get better is by being longer. His website is http://www.askaninja.com. A few posts down, there's a post called "Add a Ninja" in which he begs for you to add him as a friend on MySpace. Take some time and download them, they're freakin hilarious.

One more thing before I go… file it under the "Rant" category. At the end of September, I spent $43 on these headphones at the Computer Connection in the IMU; you know, the place where you can buy all that cool and cheap IU software. I love the headphones because they block out a majority of the ambient sound so the music doesn't have to be that loud for you to hear it and they have a great bass reflex. Well, about the middle of December, the left earbud stopped working. So today, I go to take it back to the Computer Connection, but they guy at the register (who is obviously new, but that's not relevant) told me that they don't take returns or exchanges. The only help they could give me was "Try calling Apple. Maybe they can help you out." I wanted to throw the earbuds at them and walk out, but I kept my cool.

Moral of the story — don't buy anything from the Computer Connection in the Union unless it's cheap software. They don't stand behind what they sell.

Anyway, I think that's about it for me right now.

For not having much to say, I sure turned this into a decent post… I'm going to go find some more funny podcasts.

peace

The End-of-the-Blog Rundown

Song of the Day — Banana Pancakes — Jack Johnson

Quote of the Day — "Tracie got run over by a Blazer, walkin back from Yogi's after lunch." — Marsha after coming back from lunch with Tracie after Tracie got hit by some dumbass not paying any attention to the crosswalk. I swear, nobody in this town can drive…

Today's Moment of Bliss — Standing on Aaron's stack of three reams of paper to view over Gwendolen's cubicle wall.

Hero of the Day — Erin for going to dinner with me last night and today I love her!

Current Mood — — Still aggravated, but right now, I'm content.

Until the next post…

As you might expect, I'm going to talk a bit about the games this weekend and predict who will win Super Bowl XL, but that'll be a little later. First, I'm going to tell you all what I did this weekend.

This weekend, I started modifying my Xbox. At first, I was going to install Linux onto the box and play around with that, but the more I read about it, the more I realized that I wouldn't be able to play on live with an Xbox running Xebian and where is the fun in creating mod'ed custom games if you can't share it with your friends online? Instead, I'm going to be working on getting a soft-mod going. I'll spare you all the details for now, but I will be keeping a log of what I do and how it works/what I did to fix it on my Sideblog under the Xbox Modding category. Check it out if you're interested, I'll probably update that again tonight.

I also modified my iPod (this is what happens when a nerd has too much free time). I installed Podzilla Linux on it, which is cool, except for the fact that I broke it somehow. Now when Podzilla boots, the contrast is so low that I can't even see the menu very well. I can tell that Podzilla is booted because you can vaguely see the black highlight bar as it moves from menu option to menu option. I'm going to have to re-install Podzilla to get that to work. The good thing is that when you install Podzilla to an iPod, the Apple iPod OS is still there, so you can listen to the music and everything just the same.

I think that's it for the Dorkenese for now. Check out the Sideblog if you want to read some more.

I've been giving a lot of thought lately to getting a tattoo of something on the back of my left shoulder. I've finally narrowed what I want to get inked to two things. Here they are:

They're based on a shirt that I was gifted this summer that I really like. The only difference between the two is the dates. They are when I earned my Eagle (1996), Vigil Honor (2001) and Minisino (2005). I'll have to double check on my Vigil and Eagle dates, but I'm pretty sure that's what they are. Before I get anything done, I'll definitely check it out. To view full sized images, click on the two small ones above. Let me know what you all think.

Friday was happy hour, which is where my quote of the day comes from. It was a good time, as always. Afterward, Erin Chris and I went to Psi Ice Skating. Again, it was a good time. The best part of ice skating was watching the kid that was speeding around, cutting everyone off slam into the glass at full speed because he couldn't stop. He definitely had a bloody nose afterward.

After Ice Skating, I don't remember what I did, but it probably involved sleeping.

Saturday was the IU/Purdue game. I am proud to report that IU won the game, expanding upon the lead in the AT&T Crimson and Gold Cup 5-3. GO HOOSIERS! Also, in College Basketball on Saturday, Duke, Pittsburgh and Florida all lost leaving no undefeated teams in Division I NCAA Men's Basketball. That made me happy. Wisconsin also lost to North Dakota State AT THE KOHL CENTER! I was happy to hear that. IU is now tied for first place in the BigTen.

Sunday was lazy-clean-the-house day since it was a mess, and that's the end of my weekend. Now on to the Football.

Now, overall in my playoff picks, I am 4-2, so no matter how my Super Bowl picks turn out, I will end over .500. Granted, I didn't predict the first round of the playoffs, but who really cares about the first round? So here it is… My Super Bowl XL prediction…

–> Steelers over the Seahawks — I really think this is going to happen this year. If the Steelers can come out fighting like they did against the Colts, they'll be able to shut down and beat the Seahawks. In fact, I think the only way this will be an interesting game is if the Steelers stay close or pull away from the Seahawks. If the Seahawks come out and take a sizeable lead on the Steelers, the game won't be interesting to watch. Both teams are good at creating and maintaining a lead; this game will come down to whoever can do that first. I hope it'll be the Steelers.

As for the games this weekend, they were just boring. If the Super Bowl is anything like the division championships, whoever shows up to play will be the team that wins.

Speaking of the Super Bowl, Will and I will be hosting the Super Bowl XL Party on Super Bowl Sunday. Everyone will be receiving an email about it later this week, most likely.

I think that's about it for me right now. I'm hungry and I think I'm going to go spend my last $5 on some food.

Peace out!

The End-of-the-Blog Rundown

Song of the Day — Rock You Like a Hurricane — The Scorpions

Quote of the Day — "This kid was so bad that I had a horrible pain in my nuts as all my sperm shot themselves in the face." — Aaron's roommate

Today's Moment of Bliss — Watching the kid that was speeding around the ice, cutting everyone off slam into the glass. He got up with a bloody nose, which was just icing on the cake… ha-ha, icing.

Villain of the Day — Kobe Bryant for scoring 81 points. I hate the NBA

Hero of the Day — Yet to be determined. Today has been very uneventful so far.

Current Mood — — Aggravated by certain things going on around me right now. Not that there's anything I can do about them, but they're starting to piss me off.

Until the next post…

Yea, so, it was definitely snowed yesterday and it was sixty degrees today. I'm getting kinda tired of this damn Indiana weather. Let's just pray that I get a job somewhere where the weather is more constant…

Yesterday, after I got home from my graveyard, there was a box waiting on me from NewEgg. Inside was something beautiful — a 1GB DDR400 PC3200 stick of RAM. I immediately opened up my iMac, stuck it in and powered it up…

That's a thing of beauty, isn't it? As soon as I have another $80 extra, I'll be bumping that another 512MB and if there's someone out there who wants a 512MB DDR400 PC3200 stick of RAM, I'll sell it for a reasonable price.

Now that that update is out of the way, I'll also be updating the PowerBook to 1.3GB RAM, but that upgrade is going to happen after the iMac upgrade is complete. Phase III of the iMac update will be a larger hard drive. I don't know if I want to go with 500GB or 250GB. I have a 250GB I could drop in now, or I could buy a 500GB and keep the 250GB in its external case… Who knows. We'll see what the wallet can handle when Phase III comes around.

Enough with the Dorkenese… time for something everyone can understand.

I updated the links on my sidebar. If you haven't updated in a while, you have been removed. If you start updating again, I'll return you to active link status. I'm also working on transferring this design to /Dev so that I can finally upgrade this blog to WordPress 2.0. But I'm sure you all don't care about that. I'm also working on getting some usability stuff taken care of as well.

Last night, watched some basketball. Tuesday night, watched IU barely beat Illinois, putting us in second place in the BigTen. Everything is looking good for IU basketball and not so good for Purdue; therefore, we should also be tacking on one more win this weekend, putting us tied for first place with Wisconsin.

On my way home from my graveyard on Wednesday morning, I took some photos of the sunrise. I don't get to see the sunrise often, so I figured I should take some pics. I posted the first of them in the Photoblog. I'll be posting more of them throughout the next couple weeks. And I just have to mention again how freakin' fast iPhoto is with an extra 1GB of RAM!

I know… it's sad how excited I am about more RAM, but I'm also excited that I have completely themed my desktop on nebulas…

I also think I'm going to create a LoginWindow plug-in for OS X. I've been thinking it would be cool to implement third factor authentication on a Mac, but I haven't found an existing application to do that. For those of you who don't know, you can authenticate in three ways, something you have, something you know or something you are. The typical username and password is two factors… two things you know. I want to create a plug-in that requires you to also prove you have a token to login, like a USB key or something. It'll give me something to do while I'm still searching for a second job.

I installed World of Warcraft on my Mac, but I need to actually go buy it and get a serial so I can create an account. So, if you have someone who has WoW and doesn't play, let him or her know I'll buy it from him or her for cheap so I can play. I really want to get into it since I've been a Warcraft freak since the original and WoW is the only one I haven't played.

I think that's about it for now. I'm going to go watch either UNC play ball or Lawrence North vs. North Central. I haven't decided which yet.

But for now, be safe, I'm out!

The End-of-the-Blog Rundown

Song of the Day — The Wanderlust — Flogging Molly

Quote of the Day — "After a rousing game of 'guess the virgin' I'm off to clean spats" — Erin

Villain of the Day — Debt… that's all I'm going to say.

Hero of the Day — Will and Erin for going to lunch with me after I ran into them outside Lindley Hall.

Current Mood — — Excited

Until the next post…

Ok, so creativity is something I definitely don't have much of right now, so this post will most likely be un-creative. (I definitely typed that an hour before the rest of this post because I lost all concentration and started looking at AppleScripts and plug-ins that I can add to my Adium… Yea, I'm a dork, I know)

Let's see, this last weekend was Erin's birthday, so Happy Birthday to Erin, again . She's 22 now and I still love her, even though she's old.

Since it was her birthday, we celebrated starting with Happy Hour with the STC folks on Friday. Afterward, the party migrated to our house where we Hookah'd and watched TV. Erin passed out, but that didn't stop the good times. Saturday afternoon, we went to Shelbyville to pick up a package that I had delivered to the wrong address because Kohl's online ordering interface sucks balls. After dinner with the family, I took the shortest shower known to man and we headed to the Bluebird to watch 40% Steve to celebrate her birthday with the Kappa Kappa Psi folks who wanted to come with. Only Carrie, Lewis (even though he's not in Psi), Krista, Cardrey and Steph showed up, which was good. Large groups of people I know scare me… hahahaha I think it's just large groups in general.

Sunday we watched football and I'm happy to say that I was 2-2 with my predictions. I was glad to see the Colts lose, mostly because they had so many chances to win that game and they blew them all. Not to mention the fact that there were multiple pass interference calls that went uncalled on the Colts. Their offense was just not in a good rhythm, which was to be expected since their starters didn't play a lot the last few weeks of the regular season. They finally started getting into rhythm about five minutes into the fourth quarter, which was too little too late for the horses.

As for the Bears game, their defense collapsed. For allowing only 60-ish points at home all season long, to give up 29 points in one game is unacceptable. And they also blew some opportunities, but whatever. I can rest happy knowing that they lasted a few hours longer than the Colts did in the playoffs.

My predictions for next weekend are:

–> Steelers over the Broncos — I think the Steelers have what it takes to make it to the Super Bowl this year. They played an extremely solid game against the Colts and I think that'll give them enough momentum to get past Denver. They've already proved that they can sustain winning on the road in the playoffs, so I think they'll do it again. Plus I enjoy watching their offense and defense more than I enjoy Denver's.

–> Seahawks over the Panthers — The Panthers were impressive in their win against the Bears, but I don't think they have what it takes to make it past the high-powered Seahawks offense. They're not a solid enough team to win on the road in the playoffs again. As much as I don't like watching offenses play for championships, I think the Seahawks will make easy work of the Panthers.

So I'm predicting a Super Bowl pitting the Pittsburgh Steelers against the Seattle Seahawks. I think out of the teams remaining, that will be the most interesting combination.

I acquired a copy of Flogging Molly's newest album, Within a Mile from Home, from Billy this weekend. Oh, yea, Billy came down Friday night. I knew there was something else that happened, but I couldn't remember what. It was good times, we hung out, drank some alcohol, he told us of his interesting day. We went to China on Saturday afternoon for lunch… it was good times as always.

Back to the album. It's interesting, but in a good way. You can tell the band is starting to mature a bit. This album is more American-ized than Drunken Lullabies and Swagger and by American-ized I mean that it's got more of a Rock feel — more guitar, a little less fiddle, less flute, more bass. It's a good sound and it's still a good listen. I would give it .

That's about all I want to write for now. Erin is here, and I want to hang out with her for a while, so enjoy the new Spam fighting mechanisms in the Comments section.

peace!
tm

The End-of-the-Blog Rundown

Song of the Day — The Wrong Company — Flogging Molly — This song has been stuck in my head all freakin' day. Not that that's a bad thing, just sayin'.

Quote of the Day — "Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn't perfect at predicting the future. Based on today's stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today. Steve." — Steve Jobs after Apple surpassed Dell's market capitalization ($72.13 billion to Dell's value of $71.97 billion).

Joke of the Day — Neutron walks into a bar and orders a drink. He asks the barkeep, "How much?" Barkeep responds, "For you, no charge." — Matt Calvert

Today's Moment of Bliss — I really should start writing these things down. I had something happen to me, I just can't remember what… Damn A.D.D.

Villain of the Day — This damn div problem on my page. I'm almost to the point that a redesign will be the easiest way to solve it. I'm also trying to figure out how much I care…

Hero of the Day — Billy for coming down to hang out this weekend.

Current Mood — — Happy

Until the next post…