Gorillas and the Blue Screen of Death

There has been an overriding theme to my week:

ARRG.

So much, in fact, that I should get a T-Shirt.
Too bad my particular Screen of Death doesn't have a shirt of it's own.

And that's *on top of* blogger refusing to let me log in for over a damn week.

*sigh*

I've given a name to my pain, and it is Batma- er, rather, What The Frell Is Up With Mike's Dell. It's frustrating enough to have have given it a really long name, Spanish nobility Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez, Chief Metallurgist to King Charles the Fifth of Spain style, with capitalization and everything. 8 ( The Blue Screen of Death is becoming an increasingly frequent event, and windows take forever to open! "My Computer" opens five minutes after I click. ARRGH.
So I started doing some research, about the processes running in the Task Manager, thinking maybe spyware was responsible. Ctrl-Alt-Del should NOT be so freakin familiar, dammit. I can't remember the last time I had to force-quit something on a Mac! *ahem*

Anyway, It turns out that (as far as I'm concerned, anyway) it's WORSE than spyware - there are all sorts of legitimate-yet-nasty things that run at startup.
This page has been insanely helpful:

http://answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm

Apparently, Creative SoundBlaster and in fact all Creative software, drivers, etc, that are installed with the Creative soundcard and run the processes Devldr.exe, Devldr16.exe, or Devldr32.exe, cause so many problems that, well, it seems best to simply uninstall them. Here's an excerpt from that oh-so-helpful page:

Found on Windows 2000/XP. It really does not matter how Creative call this task/service, DEVLDR, DEVLDR16, or DEVLDR32, it is a thorough nightmare whatever its name, and DEVLDR does not disappoint. What does this task do – we do not know, it is such a frustrating task we care little about what it does.

And even further:

As one website puts it "Rumours that Creative's driver team is composed entirely of gorillas enthusiastically beating on their keyboards with their feet have not been confirmed !".

So that's what I'm in the process of doing. I have to scour the C: drive for any Creative or evil "Devldr" stuff, restart, and install windows-default soundcard drivers and software. In short: ARRGH.

In Other News, I have an idea about Xmas gifts that are brought to you by the # 400 and the letter S.

Mr. Buchanon on Story Telling and EA

The school of IST at Penn State likes to show off their new and shiny building by having lots of interesting speakers come in. One of them was John Buchanon, from Electronic Arts, speaking on the gaming industry.

Funny Quote: "We turn pizza and coke into games"

He gave us the usual consoles drive the industry bit, and gave some interesting information about how much it costs to develop a game (which is to say, A Lot), but they have a short shelf life. This is the major reason why game companies are consolidating.

One of the interesting things he talked about was how gaming is built into our culture, the new generation being people who are ~41 years old and younger. (so, in 20 years, we'll be making games for the 60 yr old demographic).

The majority of his speech was about storytelling. He asserts that our culture is built around storytelling (you ask people how their weekend was on Monday morning), and that the draw of playing a game is that its an experience that can be turned into a story. Since many people play a game, you know have a shared memory that allows you to connect to these other people. He also talked momentarily about the problems with 'interactive' storytelling in games, which is that you have to be led eventually along specific plot points (or 'portals') or else there is no game. I wish he had gone into this in more detail, but his entire speech was cut down to fit into 45 minutes.

Factoid on Language: 90% of conversation (non business and school) is gossip. There is a theory among linguists that Humans developed language because we were bored.

Bunny

Bunny is a webcomic that is just cool. Its updated everyday (so far, exactly), the art is awesome, the characters are simple, and it has that cool humor snapshot feel to it. I particularly like this one, because zombies are classic (and are also the theme for the month).
In the computer labs where I work, they put up new posters advertising yet another stupid portal. The poster has a horde of groundhog looking things with sharp teeth and weird googly eyes. One of them is saying "We're here for the brains". The PR person for the website said they were 'interest creatures', but what it means to me: Penn State is pro-Zombie. (!) o.O

Puzzles and other fun things

This has been the cause of my not Bloggingness last week. I found it in a flurry of puzzle doing that was kicked off by this.
That, and the fact that I've been completely obsessed by plants. This all started with that terrarium idea, and has accelerated into a side idea of raising bonsai and selling them. (!) I've been walking around staring at the ground, looking for interesting moss (yes, thats right, interesting moss), ferns, and other small plants that I can harvest before the dreadful snow hits and covers everything. I told poor Jim to save a bottle for me so I could raise a little clover looking plant in it til I get my terrarium going. (I was planning on removing it via chopsticks o.O )
I've even decided that I'm going to put some salamanders in there once I get it up and running (my terrarium, not the bottle).
So, am I crazy? Isn't this step one?
(does it mean something when you can reference your own blog more than once in a post?)
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o.O <- I've practiced this smiley in the mirror, so I could see that is humanly possible, because I have need for the expression so much.

DrunkenBlog: This one goes to eleven

DB at it again, with his good points. As you can see below, I was all "oooh, ahh" when the iPod photo came out.. and I wanted it, but just because I'm pretty materialistic when it comes to anything Apple, not because I actually want it. I especially have no need for it because my digital camera broke almost a year ago (cry).
Speaking of iPods, I think my 5 gig battery finally died.. either that, or walking around in the cold weather with it in my inside pocket somehow drained the battery the last couple times I've used it. =What to do about this? And my poor digital camera (cry again) How I miss taking pictures..

CNN.com - 'Brain' in a dish flies flight simulator

This is just crazy. I have more faith in the human race - we can get mouse brains to fly planes! Such crazyness. Wow. Whats really cool is just the sheer power for it to learn, we took some brain cells and stuck it on a plate with some electrodes, and it just organized itself, hooked up and went! I have more faith in my rats (Brouhaha, Gala, and Spree).
(Crazy, I say!)

Politics and Orcs

I didn't get to be Chun-Li. I couldn't find the costume bits anywhere! And resewing was just not an option. It was just too much this year. :-(
However, Election Day and our Election Night party more than make up for it. Mike & I went out with Mike's dad (Bill) to Applebee's for lunch, and that was fun because not only is Bill fun, but he's never been to an Applebee's before.
Mike, myself, Tony, Manny, Mike B & Gillian were at the party. It was a good balance of opposing political views. ^_^ We watched the election coverage and argued with each other. And laughed at the TV wackyness. Some very wacky stuff happened on TV - we caught Al Sharpton verbally taking off people's heads, apparently he's more vicious when sleep deprived. And his delivery was even more indescribably bombastic than usual. He said something to the effect that if Bush wasn't ready to go once he lost, Sharpton was gonna show up at the White House with his boys and some moving vans! *ROTFL* some of that may be TonyReinterpretation-ism though, he has a way of rephrasing things to make them even funnier. Also, apparently Dan Rather said the following: "if a frog had side pockets he'd probably wear a handgun".
o_0
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WTH??
If anyone happens to read this and has some clue what that may mean, lay it on me. The bafflement is killing me. ^_^
My dad was disappointed that we didn't invite him, even though we're separated by three states. ^_^

At any rate, the best part about this election to me right now is that it's over. Now all I have to worry about is the people that own Madison Square Garden producing commericals against building a football stadium in Manhattan. That doesn't seem like the smartest idea to me, considering NYC's already amazing traffic problem, but those commericals are damn annoying. You can only tell who makes them by the nearly illegible eeeety-bitty text at the bottom of the screen at the end.

Back in Rachel's Costume Obsession Land:

These people are about as crazy as me. They decided to make a Moria Orc. We have procedure in common:

Step 1: Realize that you are crazy.

Now you may proceed.

However, these next guys are on a totally different level. They're an actual special effects house, and pretty much their whole site is amazing to look at. Plus they have a fun front page.
But their Ring Wraith and Witch King... dude... the *actual really armor* armor, not just fake rubber armor... 0_0


In Other News, Ipod Photo Explodes my mind.

Robotics meet biology and art

WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: Natalie Jeremijenko: The WorldChanging Interview
Andy was telling me all about some of her work, it seems very interesting.

Brain in a festive frying pan.

I'm so utterly silly sometimes, I amaze myself.
Yesterday was pretty cool, I went with mike to Ralph's place, hung around while they jammed. The band is Mike-bass & vocals, Ralph-drums, Tony-guitar. They're getting pretty damn good. Mike's vocals are enthusiastic & entertaining, if not on key. ^_^ They're covering some metal songs, & writing their own - Mike's lyrics are good stuff. :-)

So after that, we get home, & Mike goes right to sleep, since he has to leave for work at 7am. I start fiddling around with The Smurf (links are fun! ^_^), hunting for some cool desktops, new icons, organizing files, stuff like that. I started doing that around 8 or 9 pm, just chillin. The TV freakishly turned itself off around midnight, which was actually fine since Fox News isn't exactly soothing. Mike & his sleeping sitting up w/TV on...plus the Rhino-snoring. What a doink. ^_^
So after that, I guess I didn't have TV to keep track of time with, and the next time I glanced at the clock, it said 4:30 am! I was like, whoa! Mike's gonna wake up in under 2 hours!
I figured I might as well sleep while Mike's at work. So I did. but not well at all. Plus I'm really weirded by the heavy fog out the window, it's... so... dark & X-Filesish and stuff. not conducive to the whole waking up thing...

In Other News, I want to be Chun Li for halloween, but I'm missing some bits of the costume I made! It's so awesome, I'm so proud of it - it's the best-looking one I've seen, if I don't say so myself. ;-) It's made from a real (if cheap) Cheong-sam from Canal St, one of my fave shopping places. Manhattan, cheap stuff, Chinatown! Yay! ^_^
I have no photos from when I 1st wore it, a few years ago... hopefully that will change if I ever find this damn stuff.
I've turned 2 apartments upside-down looking for the missing bits already. I have some of the necessary fabric left over, but I don't relish the idea of spending the next 12 hours or so sewing... god do I hope I'm exxagerating there...
I have other random news, like LOTR cooleness... I'm outta steam, though. Later, will post later. Cool links. Good Stuff.

Apple - iPod Photo

Apple - iPod Photo
OMG I want it!!
*drool* I haven't even been paying attention to this.. surprized the hell out of me. Ooh, and I need a new digital camera too.. o.O
*drooool*

DrunkenBlog: Rich Wareham of Desktop Manager

This is definitely a good read: DrunkenBlog: Rich Wareham of Desktop Manager I'm finding that I really enjoy Drunken Batman's stuff (though, I'd like to know how he came up with that name) I check his site almost as much as I check Slashdot, and usually before. That said, his interviews are excellent (and mesh well with the way I think). This particular interview has some interesting parts on the up and coming programmer:

Could you elaborate on why you don't think someone coming up could learn to code in the same way, as some would say that the amount of information and code out there has never been greater as a whole?
Because there isn't the encouragement there once was. Nowadays software makers have tried as hard as possible to hide the workings away from you and discourage fiddling. Although you can learn television maintenance by reading books on how television works generally and learning electronics, its no substitute for the amount of learning gained by getting the back off and almost killing yourself by grabbing hold of the high-tension wire :).

This is, of course, the natural progression as computers have become more appliance-like and less machines of wonder. When cars first came out, the owners had to learn how they worked sufficiently to prime pumps, turn cranks, oil, turns, strip and otherwise maintain their machines. Now they are more reliable but you can't learn how a car works by taking it to bits any more.

Also, although there is a lot of material, modern computers are too sophisticated when it comes to getting you hooked. With the old home computers one could get instant gratification by writing a program which drew a space-ship on the screen in 10 lines of BASIC. Nowadays you'd have to learn COM + Win32 + DirectX just to get a black rectangle. The 'activation energy' required for kids to get exciting things on the screen has increased exponentially over the past decade. The lack of home-programming magazines is also a problem although some the the Linux magazines here in the UK are starting to carry beginner's programming articles again.

Finally no machines come with BASIC + a programming manual in the box any more. When I was a kid programming was Just What You Did™ with a computer since commercial software was thin on the ground. I guess what I mean to say is that today's computer landscape doesn't encourage hackers like it once did.

I couldn't agree more. I seem to have the required impetus - .001 to start a project of my own. I have a bunch of ideas, enough C++ and python knowhow to code the logic of an application, but no knowledge of decent gui interfaces, which to use, and how to use them. (I would definately use python though, as I am a hard core pythonian.) Plus, I'm so flippin busy all the time.
Speaking of python, something I've been toying with is working up a project for people who know how to program but want to learn python. I am a very hands on kind of learner, and it seems to me that there isn't a really good resource out there for someone who is a experienced programmer to learn it in a decent way. I know this because I've been trying to teach it to my boyfriend. There isn't anything he really wants to program at the moment, so I can't just help him do that, and showing some of my code to him isn't really a good way to learn the language. Its kinda embarassingly hard to show something python without some kind of something to demonstrate. I figured something that does some kind of simple mp3 organization (similar to what iTunes does) would be a good first python project because it deals with dictionaries (yay) and shows you how to deal with the file system in python. As for putting this together as a resource, I would have links to some of the different python mp3 modules (id3-py looks like my favorite), a link to the python quick reference, an introduction to the basics of how to make python go and installing modules, and some useful tidbits of code (and maybe just my code for doing it). I'm not sure if this would be worth it, but I still plan on doing it when I get some time.

Oh, and through some surfing, I noticed this: Web-apps are the legacy apps of the future. Its an interesting idea, and an interesting site that I forgot existed for a while.
Oi, I think thats enough for today.

EverQuest Mac?

I just stumbled across this on xlr8yourmac.com, my absolute favorite site for mac upgrades, news, etc:

EverQuest Mac free 30 day trials?

I don't think I'm even gonna touch that, though - the last thing I need is a new time-wasting obsession...

Also xlr8 posted a link to to Apple's Tiger Preview for Developers. I can't absorb it all right now. Brain stopped at "Ooo, purty CD..."

I've been researching upgrades for The Smurf on xlr8, the drive compatability database, articles, FAQ, etc are freakin invaluable. Especially since I now have an awesome desktop tower w/tons of RAM (WHEE!), thanks to my ebay powers. And I found a better KVM switch than the one that was at the comp show, too! I'm so excited, I can't wait for it to arrive... also nervous because I'm not 100% sure it will work?

So goes my crazy comp-building project. : )

I just noticed that they say whose post it is at the bottom of the post... which could get confusing with a long post, you dunno whose post you're reading?

Ok, I'm here!

Thanks for the invite, so far this seems way better than LJ - prettier and everything. ^_^
I'll start out with my usual random stuff, I guess -
I started reading the Fallen webcomic, but dang you for distracting me with your cool link powers! o_0
I'm trying to un-tornado the apartment, sew up abused clothing, etc- really just chillin over here. In an attempt to stem the tide of Michael Chaos, I bought some cheap shelves & a mail organizer from Collections Etc., & I'm putting them together. So hopefully, the mail and gigantic clothes that typically are all over the living room will have someplace to live that mike will actually put them. Eh.
The problem with cheap furniture is that it has kinda icky varnish that really bothers my insanely sensitive self. Plus, as with most stuff from that catalog, it has lots of chemicalish powdery dust on it, that mostly smells like the yucky chemically varnish. Much handwashing and vaccuming is required. Plus, that catalog has just got some *insanely* tacky stuff. But it can be useful to us $$ impaired.
Ok, ok... I really must get back to the un-chaos-ifying effort.
Oh, and in cleaning I found some more clothing for you! Go figure. ^_^

Love & Cool stuff I would be unwise to try and wear,
CleaningKosh

Awesome artists

Just a couple cool artists I noticed today:
deviantART: Blue Kingdom by ~AyameFataru
Fallen, webcomic by Aido Rakaen
Raph.com: Eun Hee Choi
Raph.com: Hyung Jun Kim
Epilogue.net: Corene Werhane
Epilogue.net: Ron Weed
Sea of Saa ~ Fran Saa
Deviant Art: blix~it
Okie, I could go on and on. So much talent, so jealous ;)

Happy Birthday Me!

I'm 21! ah! This isn't supposed to happen.. I was never actually going to hit 21, I thought I'd be, well, not 21 forever. Not that 21 is important to me, as I'm not much into going to bars, or anything else like that.
Meanwhile, Jim, being the bestest, sweetest boyfriend ever, got me an amazing necklace that I saw window shopping oneday. Its a cool thick, flat silver ring on a black braided leather thong. Its really nice. Thankyou babe, I love you!

Ahh! Missing posts

My posts are dissapearing. (Including, ironically, the blogger.com vs livejournal one) This is rather alarming and dissapointing, as I was really warming up to blogger.com. =( I sent an email to their help, and hopefully they can be found..

Vivarium Galore

So, my new Next Big Project (tm) is going to be a vivarium(minus the animals) in the 20 gallon hexagonal tank (18x16x20in) that I inherited from Robin, Jay, and Anita. I'm pretty sure its an All-Glass, so I'm going to have to order a lid for it from my local pet store.
Theres an interesting waterfall/pump/fogger (ooh, fancy!) set from Exo Terra that costs about 50$. At 10x10x13 in, this is going to be the centerpeice of the vivarium. They seem to be cheap at Reptile Supply
There's fake jungle vines that you can pick up from the local petstore that I'm going to use to give it a deeper feel, but I'd really love a hunk of Ghost Wood which does well in very wet habitats and usually grows moss. (even some Cypress Wood would be cool), but these cost about 20$ a peice
You can also buy sheets of dried moss from the petstore that I'm going to attach to the back of my aquarium, not sure if I'll do it on one or two sides, but I can attach air plants in there. In my research, a great place to buy plants is: Black Jungle
As for the floor, I'm going to use Terra-Lite (expanded clay mix) for drainage, then ground coconut fiber as soil for the plants.
Of course, to top it off, I bought some small plastic jurassic park dinosaur figures to put in there. I've always wanted to do that :)
I'm excited. Now all I need is a lot of money..

Slashdotting 10/19/04

Now I know how a manual transmission & clutch work! Whee!
That wasn't too hard to understand. Don't think I could fix one, but it would be interesting to take one apart.

Todays Slashdotting Results:

• Jet Engine on a Chip: Fuel powered PDAs and cellphones? Is this really better? How do you refuel a cellphone?
• The Strangerhood: A new Sims2 based show from the makers of Red vs Blue. Could be fun
• Apple's new iBook G4: Cool, but I'm going to be switching to a desktop, thankyou (*drool* Powermac G5)
• Deadly Browser bits: This is interesting: some guy wrote a program that randomly generated broken HTML code which broke all browsers but IE. (saved by the inherent suckyness?)
Distress signal sent by TV: Hehehe.. the cops showed up at his door.
• OSX RSS Feed program creators interview: Woo, this is interesting.. what some people who know think about RSS, with a Maccie twist

Weekends Over

Well, I survived my sister's visit. It wasn't too bad, really, I'm touched that she drove all the way up here to visit me. She left her really nice, sexy leather jacket (which looks amazing on me), I'll be returning that to her when I go visit my grandparents next week.

Now we're right back into the week. You know, it seems like I don't have any free time. This is because I don't. Jim bought me a copy of "Black Hawk Down" when we started going out three weeks ago, and I've gotten to page 30 (in three weeks! and this is while I'm reading in class, and its a really good book (so far)). Thats sad. Whenever I have a moment to relax, or I actually go to bed at a reasonable time, I feel like I should be doing something that I'm forgetting, and it bugs me. At the same time, I constantly feel like I'm blowing off my friends, Jim, my dad, or my pets, because I'm so busy doing shit. I hope my schedule settles down soon, because this is no good. /bitch

In other news, Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars was amazing. The first 2 hours really disapointed me, but they completely made up for it with the second half. (except for naming the damn baby D'argo, for crying out loud!) The second episode had some amazing battle scenes, ridiculous things happened, more ridiculous things happened, and I almost cried a couple times. Oh, and they practically blew up the universe. Everything you could really want in an episode of Farscape really.

Oh, and while we're at it: Dad, you should really start a blog. I mean, really. I suspect that you secretly spend most of your time trolling the internet for cool or informational blogs, programming tidbits and interesting open source projects, and other random things. You know so, so much that I don't understand how you fit it all into your brain. You having a blog (come on, even I'm doing it now, and I swore I never would), would be like having the ultimate cool filter of the internet. If you even just had a site of links, that would be cool, or a list of rss feeds. You know you want to. Do I have to start a petition?

Lesse, what else.. ah. Its raining here, which is completely understandable, because this is Pennsylvania, and well, that what it does in the fall. What I want to know is why it smells soo bad after it rains. I know its the earthworms dying on the pavement (poor buggers), but earthworms are small, and there really aren't that many on the sidewalks, and they've only been dead an hour or two, and they're watered down now ~ why does it produce such a strong smell?
Hmm. Well, back to reading up on how transmissions work.

More Updating, Happiness, and General Weekend Terror?

Well, since I spend 13.5 hours a week sitting in front of a computer at work but with nothing in particular to do besides baby the laser printers, I decided that I actually will have more time to update this. Now if I only had something to talk about. :)
I would like to note, for the record, that I am a very happy chica. Very happy. Jim is an awesome boyfriend. He's super nice to me, very much the gentleman. In fact, I think he's going to spoil me rotten, not that I mind ;). Jim's quiet, but really smart, and he makes me laugh. He's also caring, and sexy, and he makes me happy. There's really not much else I could ask for in life (besides a car, damnit). Thank you, Jim, you're amazing. =)
In other news, my sister's coming up this weekend. If she makes it here (she's driving a crazy car up after a full shift of work in the middle of the rainy night), then I guess I'm going to have to find things to entertain her and her friend with. Seeing as I don't even know how to entertain myself when I get a break from work, I have no idea what to do with her, who's very much into partying and stuff like that. I also work from 1000 to 2400 tomorrow, so poor Jim's going to be stuck entertaining them. (Good luck babe) *sigh*