Finger updates from dolson@icculus.orgicculus.org finger digestFri, 29 Mar 2024 06:00:26 -0400Finger updates from dolson@icculus.orghttps://icculus.org/icculus-org-now.png
https://icculus.org/finger/dolson?rss=1
.plan update from dolson, 2013-11-21 11:51:22
https://icculus.org/finger/dolson?date=2013-11-21&time=11-51-22
Thu, 21 Nov 2013 11:51:22 -0500
Nothing to see here. I'm a boring arse!<br/>
.plan update from dolson, 2007-02-25 14:06:05
https://icculus.org/finger/dolson?date=2007-02-25&time=14-06-05
Sun, 25 Feb 2007 14:06:05 -0500
--------------------Chunky-Kibbles-Measure-Line-------------------------<br/><br/>Current Projects and Websites<br/>-----------------------------<br/>> <a href="http://www.wiisels.com/">http://www.wiisels.com/</a> (This is a Wii game release date calendar for NA)<br/>> <a href="http://www.rivironline.com/">http://www.rivironline.com/</a> (This is music I create myself as RIVIR)<br/>> <a href="http://www.ubuntustudio.com/">http://www.ubuntustudio.com/</a> (This is my wiki for Ubuntu musicians)<br/>> <a href="http://icculus.org/~dolson/wishlist">http://icculus.org/~dolson/wishlist</a> (my wishlist)<br/>> <a href="http://www.scapegoatsoftware.com/">http://www.scapegoatsoftware.com/</a> (This is my programming site)<br/>> <a href="http://gimpdesk.tk/">http://gimpdesk.tk/</a> (This is gimps by me and my ex-co-workers)<br/>> <a href="http://aslan.homelinux.com/dana/movies/">http://aslan.homelinux.com/dana/movies/</a> (My mini movie review site)<br/><br/><br/>2007-02-20<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, today Sonic and the Secret Rings ships for Wii. I'm excited, hoping that<br/>WalMart will have it in stock today... EB Games can suck my left nut, as they<br/>told me that it comes out here on the 28th. Piss on that. I'll order it from<br/>eBay if I can't get it by the end of tomorrow from WalMart.<br/><br/>Also, I launched Wiisels.com, a website for Wii game release dates. Check it<br/>out if you have a Wii and are in North America (sorry everyone else.. I can't<br/>track all the other release dates too, unless other people help me out...<br/>Maybe some day in the future).<br/><br/><br/>2006-12-07<br/>----------<br/><br/>I figured I should put an update here for all zero of my faithful readers.<br/><br/>Well, I am going back to Debian. I don't agree with Mark's actions on the<br/>OpenSUSE mailing list, and the entire thing was a bit of a wake-up call in the<br/>first place. Mark is funding Ubuntu, and if he pulled out at any time, then<br/>where would the distro be? It could carry on, but not nearly in the same<br/>manner as it is now. At least that's my thoughts.. Adding proprietary things<br/>such as the NVIDIA drivers by default is a compromise on free as in speech<br/>freedom, and I think it is not a great plan. Anyhow, maybe I am over-reacting<br/>but I don't really care. Nobody cares who uses what distro anymore, that's so<br/>three years ago.<br/><br/>The Wii is amazingly fun. I love first-person shooters again! Call of Duty 3<br/>is fun to play, and actually, any game is. If you don't have a Wii yet, and<br/>you can afford about $250 US for a new gaming experience, pick one up. I have<br/>not had this much excitement and fun playing games since the SNES. Thanks to<br/>Nintendo and their ideas of shaking up the gaming industry rather than merely<br/>progressing technologically, gaming is fun again.<br/><br/>I do not work for Nintendo. I don't get any reward if you buy a Wii.<br/><br/><br/>2006-09-19<br/>----------<br/><br/>Three months and no update... So much has happened.<br/><br/>Firstly, I don't know what the deal with lilo and diablo-d3 was, and I<br/>don't care. lilo is gone, and that is shitty. My condolences to his<br/>family.<br/><br/>Next up, the Wii has me very excited. I hope to get one at launch.<br/><br/>Also, I have been learning a lot about how to do music with Linux.<br/>This is fun and exciting in it's own right. I will be re-doing all<br/>of my songs in software now, and it's gonna be interesting, if<br/>tedious.<br/><br/>Finally, October will see me travelling to my old city of Toronto to<br/>check out Iron freakin' Maiden! It's been a long time coming. I am<br/>so glad I didn't buy Alice Cooper tickets, even though he's in my city<br/>next month. This is a much better opportunity because although I love<br/>and respect Alice, Iron Maiden has been a much larger influence on me,<br/>musically, and they put on an amazing show, by all accounts. I can't<br/>wait, and my wife is even more stoked than I am.<br/><br/><br/>2006-06-19<br/>----------<br/><br/>There's no such thing as hockey...<br/>There's no such thing as hockey...<br/>There's no such thing as hockey...<br/><br/><br/>2006-06-05<br/>----------<br/><br/>And so it begins.<br/><br/>I really hope that Edmonton can get done what no other Canadian team has <br/>done in recent decades... Take home the Stanley Cup to where it belongs! <br/>Canada. I expect to be disappointed, but there is always hope.<br/><br/><br/>2006-05-26<br/>----------<br/><br/>Now that Google has "ported" Picasa to Linux, I guess everyone can stop <br/>saying that Wine doesn't ruin chances for native ports. It is true <br/>that companies would rather use Wine than put any effort into properly <br/>supporting Linux long-term. Hell, Google didn't even use Winelib, they <br/>used Wine itself! Sure, they contributed some code back to Wine, which <br/>only helps advance Wine. If this keeps happening, it just makes me <br/>wonder why even bother running Linux instead of Windows? Thank <br/>God for F-Spot and other open-source software. Thank God.<br/><br/>F-Spot doesn't look like ass either, like the Win32 app that Picasa is.<br/><br/><br/>2006-05-14<br/>----------<br/><br/>For once, I will do what Sony and Microsoft want me to do. And that is <br/>NOT to buy their products, but instead to buy Nintendo's product.<br/><br/><a href="http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2006-05-11T132519Z_01_N10243836_RTRUKOC_0_US-EXPO-MICROSOFT.xml">http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2006-05-11T132519Z_01_N10243836_RTRUKOC_0_US-EXPO-MICROSOFT.xml</a><br/><a href="http://www.thewiire.com/news/312/1/Sony_Executive_Recommends_Wii_As_Second_Console">http://www.thewiire.com/news/312/1/Sony_Executive_Recommends_Wii_As_Second_Console</a><br/><br/>Hey, if I can't decide which console to buy, I'll just look at what all <br/>three companies are saying to decide.<br/><br/><Microsot> Buy the Wii! It's cool!<br/><Sony> We recommend you get a Wii!<br/><Nintendo> What they said!<br/><Me> Wii it is!<br/><br/><br/>2006-05-09<br/>----------<br/><br/>$500 for a lite PS3? WTF are they smoking? I know for sure now that I <br/>won't be getting one for a long, long time.<br/><br/>Let's hope Nintendo's conference reports the launch date and price, and <br/>that the price is low... $200 or under would have me in the lineups on <br/>release day.<br/><br/><br/>2006-05-05<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, I just finished my first full work week in my new position as a <br/>Perl programmer. After five days, I went from knowing nothing about Perl <br/>outside of what it does, to being able to code some applications, use <br/>modules, read and write to PostgreSQL databases (which I have also never <br/>previously dealt with), and send email. I learned a lot of it on my own <br/>by reading and experimenting, but a large credit goes to the simple, <br/>to-the-point help that I have been given by my fellow programmer who <br/>sits a few feet away from me. I'm well on the road to becoming a real <br/>Perl programmer.<br/><br/>And let me just say that I have been blessed with an awesome work place, <br/>awesome co-workers, and an awesome company. My friends who have moved on <br/>from our last place of employment also claim their new companies are <br/>great, so I am thinking that my previous employer was the exception <br/>rather than the rule, when it comes to employee treatment, business <br/>practices, and employee hiring standards.<br/><br/>There is a cut in pay compared to my last position of around $8600, <br/>which sucks, but I am much happier here, I am not tethered to a <br/>company-issued cell phone, forced to be on-call 24/7, I am not in shift <br/>work, I don't work weekends, etc. I can bring my bike right into the <br/>office and put it into the back room during the day, and the ride there <br/>is only about 10 minutes, 15 if I pedal very leisurely.<br/><br/>A brand new 64-bit system is sitting at my desk - oh yes, it's a desk, <br/>not a cubicle - with an LCD monitor. On top of that, today a co-worker <br/>any I took a trip to Staples and picked out a nice keyboard with more <br/>features than I needed, and a new pointing device - a Logitech optical <br/>trackball, because I prefer to not use mice, as they tend to be too <br/>small for my hands and my pinky and ring fingers cramp.<br/><br/>This morning I got to work, and there was a large Tim Horton's coffee <br/>sitting on my desk, with my name on it. That sort of thing just didn't <br/>happen before, but here this is an almost daily phenomenon - and there <br/>is a stack of paper coffee cup trays in the corner of the room that <br/>reaches the ceiling to prove it.<br/><br/>To top it off, I was informed that at the end of every month, the <br/>company buys pizza for us. So that is awesome, as pizza is my favorite <br/>food. My last place did buy us pizza occasionally, but once they were <br/>bought by that company in Pakistan, those rare occasions seemed to have <br/>stopped. For us in Canada, anyhow.<br/><br/>This new place I am working at is everything that I'm about. They do <br/>webhosting, they are an ISP, a CLEC, they do VoIP with Asterisk, and a <br/>big portion of it is running on Linux, which is fantastic. I don't think <br/>there are any SCO UNIX boxes kicking around either, something I hated at <br/>the last place. I'm even allowed - forced, actually - to run Linux on my <br/>workstation; whichever distro I want. Of course, I put Ubuntu, but <br/>would've been happy even with the company standard of debian.<br/><br/>I've been accepted and welcomed to the company with open arms by <br/>everyone, and it's much less hostile an environment, but things still <br/>seem to get done! The developers actually do come into the office, and <br/>they actually do work. Fathom that! Everyone in the company, which spans <br/>numerous cities, is accessible by 4-digit extensions, so I can quickly <br/>memorize these, as opposed to memorizing many 10-digit numbers over <br/>multiple cities in multiple countries. Yes, everything seems to be much <br/>improved over the previous job.<br/><br/>So, as my previous supervisor, on my final day with the company, had <br/>mentioned it might be, being laid off was definitely a blessing in <br/>disguise. Even after four and a half months of sitting on my couch with <br/>no clue what the future held, collecting government money to attempt to <br/>make ends meet.<br/><br/>Now I don't have to move to another city, I don't have to keep sending <br/>out or delivering resumes and hoping for callbacks, nor do I have to <br/>worry about stress from feeling like a worthless non-contributor to our <br/>household. Now I can stay here where I have a doctor, friends, family, <br/>and a good church. Thank God!<br/><br/>To get onto another topic, E3 starts very soon, and I'm excited as all <br/>getup to see what Nintendo has in store!<br/><br/>That is all for now. :)<br/><br/><br/>2006-04-28<br/>----------<br/><br/>So, just over a month after being rejected by the job I said I wanted as <br/>a Perl developer, I got an unexpected call back, with an offer for the <br/>job. So I start on Monday. I also have been having some weird feelings <br/>in my left side of my throat, so hopefully my doctor listens to me.<br/><br/>I'm excited to get my hands on my Wii! The games that are coming out <br/>will be awesome, and I read an interview with someone from EA, and it <br/>was very interesting to hear about the new Madden. I'm not one for <br/>football, but I think I might try it this time around. EA has a studio <br/>dedicated to the Wii, so that's pretty cool. I am really excited about a <br/>Fight Night game, especially if the attachment also has gyros to detect <br/>motion. That would ROCK.<br/><br/><br/>2006-04-09<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, yesterday I figured out how to cross-compile again in Linux, for <br/>Windows. So that's good, because there is a new project I'm working on <br/>and it will need to run on Windows as well. I'll put more details here <br/>when something is ready for release.<br/><br/><br/>2006-03-19<br/>----------<br/><br/>So, I got an email from Mark Shuttleworth, and there will be a new <br/>Ubuntu derivative distro for multimedia use. He said he'll give me more <br/>details this week. I really hope that it is all in the repos and is <br/>official, and can be installed with apt-get install mubuntu (I assume it <br/>will be called Mubuntu, based on the domain registration).<br/><br/><br/>2006-03-16<br/>----------<br/><br/>I had a job interview today at an ISP/host/CLEC/VoIP/everything company. <br/>The position is for a Jr. Perl developer. I don't know Perl, but I <br/>started looking at it, and it doesn't look like it would take me long to <br/>pick it up. I'm pretty good at that sort of thing, and if I can do PHP <br/>and some C/C++ stuff, I'm sure Perl can't be that hard.<br/><br/>I really want that job. The guys seem really nice, the company seems <br/>stable, and best of all, the programmers use Debian!<br/><br/>I am ashamed that I messed up though. I didn't have my references on me <br/>because I asked a few people for advice, and they said to not bring <br/>anything with me. So I sent them my references through email, but I had <br/>an error on the page. One of my references' job title and employer were <br/>wrong... So I corrected it and sent it in. I hope they don't disqualify <br/>me because of that error. I only corrected it because I am honest and <br/>would not want to get a job by lying. For instance, some of my friends <br/>suggested I just not correct it - they'll never notice! they say. It <br/>would be easy enough to call up my reference and tell him of my error, <br/>and ask him to play it up. But dishonesty isn't the best policy, I <br/>think. So I really, really hope they realize this.<br/><br/>I'll post another update when I find out if I got the job or not... Time <br/>to go read some Perl docs. :)<br/><br/><br/>2006-01-31<br/>----------<br/><br/>Still no job. And ZERO sales of my CD. That's great. Life is so awesome.<br/><br/>I am working on a website for Ubuntu users, namely musicians, who want <br/>to use Ubuntu as a recording studio. You could check it out and <br/>contribute at www.ubuntustudio.com. I've spent one full week on it so <br/>far, and have had very little help.<br/><br/>I've also been talking with some guys from Canonical/Ubuntu and I have <br/>contacted Free from DeMuDi, with regards to getting Ubuntu to the point <br/>where it should be for musicians. This means we need an experimental <br/>kernel patch (obviously not in the main kernel tree for Ubuntu) as an <br/>option, as well as some software that is missing. Any real progress with <br/>this will be notated on my site.<br/><br/><br/>2005-12-05<br/>----------<br/><br/>I have finally put together my demo CD. It's called, "The Demo" and you <br/>can get it for $6.99 Real Money from www.cafepress.com/rivir - also, get <br/>yourself a thong while you're at it!<br/><br/>Only 11 more days left of my current job. Because I was laid off. Along <br/>with 5 others. Basically, our company is being offshored to Pakistan, <br/>the Philippines, Brazil or something like that, and France. Great.<br/><br/>In other news, I've recorded a Christmas song for a compilation that <br/>will also be sold through CafePress shortly. <br/><a href="http://www.cafepress.com/xmascomp">http://www.cafepress.com/xmascomp</a> will be the URL to buy it if you like.<br/><br/><br/>2005-11-16<br/>----------<br/><br/>It appears that the new Xbox 360's power supply is housed in an original <br/>Xbox. I was gonna get an Xbox 360, but I need to build an addition onto <br/>my house just for the power supply:<br/><br/><a href="http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/system/microsoft/xbox360/bundle.jpg">http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/system/microsoft/xbox360/bundle.jpg</a><br/><br/><br/>2005-05-08<br/>----------<br/><br/>I went to Toronto yesterday and ended up coming home with a new Roland <br/>TD-3KV electronic drum kit. Pretty cool stuff.<br/><br/><br/>2005-04-16<br/>----------<br/><br/>Here are most of the remaining mini-reviews. There are one or two that I <br/>haven't got to yet though. I'll add them later on.<br/><br/>Wyrick - Mental Floss<br/>Travis Wyrick is pretty cool, from everything I've heard to date. He did <br/>some good work on Gretchen's disc too. But, I can't help but wonder if <br/>his blatant rip offs of Trent Reznor go unnoticed... Have a listen to <br/>Sacrifice and compare to NIN's The Perfect Drug. I see similarities. But <br/>even worse, is a track that's not on Mental Floss, called More of You. <br/>If you can check that out, compare it to NIN's song Wish, and tell me <br/>that it's not lifted material... Anyhow, all that aside, I really like <br/>Wyrick, and even like those songs too. And hey, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe <br/>Travis came up with those melodys and chord progressions on his own <br/>without ever hearing the NIN songs. But somehow I doubt it, as even the <br/>other material reminds me of other bands/songs, but I can't place them <br/>all.<br/><br/>Grammatrain - Lonely House<br/>I knew most of the songs on this disc from MP3s I had from AudioGalaxy's <br/>free days. The main difference is that these are not live versions, so <br/>they sound a lot better. Some songs remind me of bands like Silverchair <br/>(specifically the track Execution). I don't mind these guys, but they <br/>aren't going to get tons of play in my CD player, at least not when I <br/>have CDs from bands like [null factor] and Oil.<br/><br/>Oil - Refine<br/>Wow! Awesome metal band. After hearing only the first track, I knew that <br/>they were closing in on Megadeth for my favorite metal band, and my wife <br/>said ealy on in the disc that she liked them more than Metallica (I keep <br/>telling her Metallica blows, but she doesn't listen). Anyhow, if you <br/>like metal, check out Oil. Sadly they've disbanded, but this disc is <br/>still worth getting. Global Warning is great too.<br/><br/>Ultimatum - Puppet of Destruction<br/>I'm not sure why I ordered this. I guess I was hoping for some great <br/>metal, but I should've checked out some samples or something first, <br/>because I can't stand the vocals. The drums and bass could use a lot of <br/>low-end boost. Maybe they'll grow on me, I dunno.<br/><br/>Torn Skin - Violence and Technology<br/>I love the guitars in this disc. They just sound really cool. Same goes <br/>with samples, a soft spot. Some of this reminded me of NIN. I have to <br/>listen to it a lot more for it to grow on me totally, but I like the <br/>Remote Control tracks the best so far. The unlisted track is kinda <br/>strange, but nice.<br/><br/>Autovoice - A Living Death<br/>I was not real impressed with some of the vocals on this disc. The <br/>second track has a real loud and obnoxious sound, which would appear to <br/>be a snare drum sound. It reappears on other tracks, such as Fallout. <br/>I'm sorry, but snare drums should not overpower the entire mix like <br/>this, no matter how radical a sound you're trying to go for. I try to <br/>like it, but in the end, it just causes me to skip the remainder of the <br/>track. The distorted-sounding vocals that appear throughout the album <br/>sound too quiet to me. I bought this because someone likened them to <br/>Skinny Puppy. It's maybe more like Skinny Puppy if they had the guy from <br/>Cybershadow or something guest singing, and if they used a rapid-fire <br/>shotgun for a snare drum. If it weren't for the mis-matched sound <br/>levels, I could probably get past the vocals and really get into this <br/>disc, but as it is, it's not real fun to listen to for me.<br/><br/>Feezel - Life Moves On<br/>Described as a "nastier-edged Megadeth," if you've heard this disc, you <br/>could understand my frustration and disappointment with that <br/>description. They're more like a heavy rock band, and not so much metal. <br/>The vocals sound pretty good, and the disc is mostly enjoyable, as long <br/>as you skip over the Church as Usual track. For some reason, I think <br/>that people who like Pillar may like these guys.<br/><br/>[null factor] - Purity<br/>I figured I'd love this disc right from the first moments of the opening <br/>track. I was right. Pretty much every track has a great underlying beat, <br/>great vocals, and overall, it's very danceable music (not that I dance, <br/>heh, nobody wants to see that). The Jagged Doctrine mix of Critical is a <br/>treat that has a very different sound compared to the rest of the disc. <br/>My favorite track so far is the opening cut, but this is becoming a <br/>favorite disc of mine quickly.<br/><br/>Symbiotica<br/>Very relaxing, female vocals on a bed of soft synth sounds with assorted <br/>other sounds and percussion. I like the sound of Wilderness Call, with <br/>that singing and percussive beat the best, but some songs are a bit too <br/>happy-sounding for my tastes. In fact, the entire CD is kinda out of my <br/>range, but if I ever need to fall asleep, and fast, I'll pop this disc <br/>in.<br/><br/>The Way Sect Bloom - Effloresce<br/>I knew of these guys from the Electro Shock Therapy comp, and I'm glad I <br/>finally ordered their disc. The song Washed reminds me highly of Circle <br/>of Dust, and this is no shock, considering Klayton worked on this disc, <br/>and I think this song in particular.<br/><br/>Elder - Plagues, Woes<br/>I bought this, and now, not even a week after it arrived, the price was <br/>cut in half! This just burns me up! I'm outraged! I could've paid only <br/>50 cents for this disc, but no, they ripped me! Oh well, at least it's <br/>almost decent for a grunge band. Some songs feel out of place, like <br/>River, and lyrics like those on Down the Stairs seem kinda silly. Some <br/>of the disc sounds repetitive, but hey, it's grunge. Some songs stand <br/>out, unlike Wish for Eden's Pet the Fish disc, but still, they're few <br/>and far between.<br/><br/><br/>2005-04-12<br/>----------<br/><br/>More CDs came in today.<br/><br/>Sometime Sunday - Drain<br/>Very cool grungy type stuff. Sounds similar to Soundgarden and the like. <br/>I like this album so far.<br/><br/>Wish for Eden - Pet the Fish<br/>This album is comprised of 10 identical tracks. Or at least that was <br/>what I thought... Upon further examination, apparently the songs have <br/>different lyrics.<br/><br/>Fell Venus - @<br/>Some pretty strange singing on this album. I don't really know why I got <br/>rid of the first copy of it that I owned, but some songs can get on your <br/>nerves. Nevermind the weird track numbering.<br/><br/>Mortal - Nu En Jin<br/>This is much better vocals than the previous Mortal albums I've <br/>heard, even though I didn't mind some of their older stuff, in <br/>moderation. This is a great change, and totally different than Wake, <br/>which was kinda sore-thumbish for them.<br/><br/><br/>2005-04-09<br/>----------<br/><br/>Ever<br/>Wow! Amazing stuff here. I got goosebumps listening to some of it... <br/>Also, they sent me two copies of the CD - one of them was signed too. <br/>I'm not sure if the second copy was a mistake or what, so I'm gonna <br/>email them about it.<br/><br/>Virgin Black - Elegant... and Dying<br/>Very nice. I've always loved them since the first time I heard their <br/>stuff, way before AudioGalaxy was turned into a pay service. I own <br/>Sombre Romantic and Trance discs, and now this. All are masterpieces. I <br/>really love listening to their music. I did notice that the track times <br/>listed on the back are sometimes shorter than the tracks on the disc. <br/>That's kinda strange.<br/><br/>Generation - Brutal Reality<br/>Very cool sounding industrial metal hybrid. I like the samples they use, <br/>and the vocals are cool. I am glad I gambled on this one.<br/><br/><br/>2005-04-08<br/>----------<br/><br/>Some CDs are in. Below are the first few reviews.<br/><br/>Global Warning - Enemy Within<br/>A great metal album... The singer has a good sound for his vocals... <br/>Kinda reminds me a bit of Jon from Korn crossed with James from <br/>Metallica, with a touch of Dale from Bride for vocals, coupled with a <br/>cross between Titanic, Virgin Black, Metallica for the music. Others <br/>might compare them to Disturbed or Godsmack or POD, based on what I've <br/>read. Anyhow, great band, they have clips on their site. If you like <br/>metal at all, check out the clips at least.<br/><br/>Judean Radiostatic - Flux<br/>Nice sound. I like the samples used in the first track... Something I <br/>really miss in a lot of the Christian music I listen to. Sometimes the <br/>vocals reminded me of Skinny Puppy and sometimes a bit of Marilyn <br/>Manson. The occasional female vocals are nice too.<br/><br/>dead turns alive - Salvation and Despair<br/>Some more samples, which are great, and some really good tracks. Some of <br/>them I didn't like as much, as they sounded too technoy. My favorite <br/>track is definitely Influence, which you can get a live video of on <br/>their website. I have to listen to it more for it to grow on me, because <br/>a few of the songs were disappointing, but I'm sure that'll change.<br/><br/>Gretchen - In the Mean Time<br/>I was pleasantly surprised that I liked most of the songs on this album, <br/>as I was expecting it to be like No Doubt. The CD has tons of extras <br/>too, such as the entire album pre-ripped to 128Kbps MP3s, wallpapers, <br/>icons, videos, lyrics... Very cool batch of extras, and thankfully it's <br/>not all embedded into a single file... So then I can view it all in <br/>Linux. Anyhow, it's a good female-fronted rock band, and a song or to <br/>reminds me a tiny bit of Evanescence, but more rockish. No piano.<br/><br/>Fatal Blast Whip - Constellation<br/>The soothing sounds of this album put me to sleep. I'll have to listen <br/>to it again. I like the sound of the vocals for sure. Very nice. I'll <br/>give it another listen when I'm more awake.<br/><br/>I love them all so far, but my favorites are Global Warning and <br/>Gretchen. Well... Each album has a few tracks that are awesome... I <br/>guess I just like them all.<br/><br/><br/>2005-03-31<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, I just decided that I'm sick of crappily-named MP3 files. So I did <br/>a quick search of my APT repositories, and I discovered EasyTAG. Wow! I <br/>sure wish I didn't procrastinate in searching for a decent MP3 file <br/>renamer/ID3 tag editor. It's sweet. If you're looking for one, check it <br/>out. No, I'm not with them. I can't hardly code yet.<br/><br/><br/>2005-03-27<br/>----------<br/><br/>I modded an Xbox yesterday and upgraded hard drives in two Xboxes. This <br/>means I had cash to spend. And I decided to buy me a whole new musical <br/>library. Here are the two dozen discs I am expecting in the coming <br/>weeks. I'll try posting a review here of each album as I listen to them, <br/>if I remember.<br/><br/>Autovoice - Living Death<br/>Dead Turns Alive - Salvation and Despair<br/>Elder - Plagues and Woes<br/>Ever<br/>Feezel - Life Moves On<br/>Fell Venus - @<br/>Generation - Brutal Reality<br/>Global Warning - Enemy Within<br/>Grammatrain - Lonely House<br/>Gretchen - In the Mean Time<br/>Jagged Doctrine - Absolution<br/>Judean Radio Static - Flux<br/>Mortal - Nu En Jin<br/>Null Factor - Purity<br/>Oil - Refine<br/>Sometime Sunday - Drain<br/>Symbiotica<br/>Torn Skin - Violence & Technology<br/>Ultimatum - Puppet Of Destruction<br/>Virgin Black - Elegant and Dying<br/>Way Sect Bloom - Effloresce<br/>Wish For Eden - Pet the Fish<br/>Wyrick - Mental Floss<br/>Yonderboy - Mission Of Mercy<br/><br/><br/>2005-03-05<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, so far on this new job I haven't really used Asterisk yet.<br/><br/>I've been learning a lot of stuff about SIP and general telecom. Well, <br/>not so much learning new telecom stuff as remembering stuff from <br/>college. Anyhow, I've been using iptel.org's SER software on Debian, <br/>which is great. Who ever thought that I'd get to set up Linux at this <br/>company, and get paid to do it?<br/><br/>Well, nothing really new. I did put Ubuntu on my laptop and my desktop. <br/>So far I'm impressed with it. It's user-friendly, but not in the same <br/>way that Mandrake et al are. Ubuntu does things nicely, whereas <br/>Mandrake's tools, or whoever else you want to compare to, tend to get in <br/>the way. Moving from Debian to Ubuntu, was it a good change? I can't <br/>tell you that yet, but so far it seems great. I'd like to see this <br/>distro raise to the top of the pack. There are a lot of names working on <br/>it - Jeff Waugh, Daniel Stone, etc. It's impressive so far, anyhow.<br/><br/><br/>2005-01-31<br/>----------<br/><br/>Today marks the beginning of the second week of my new job as a Jr. <br/>Telecom Technician. That's a fancy title for "Asterisk/Linux Research <br/>and Development." This is supposed to last 6 months, but might run <br/>longer/permanently if the company decides to move this into production.<br/><br/><br/>2005-01-12<br/>----------<br/><br/>This Christmas I got money, plus I sold a bunch of old gear. Now I have <br/>spent close to $900-$1000 on music gear. This is insane! Oh yeah, and my <br/>RM1x came in and it was severely beaten.<br/><a href="http://icculus.org/~dolson/rm1x.html">http://icculus.org/~dolson/rm1x.html</a><br/><br/><br/>2004-12-20<br/>----------<br/><br/>Jim Gaffigan is a funny comic. Check him out if you're interested and <br/>haven't heard of him yet. I wouldn't plug his website <br/>(jimgaffigan.com) in my .plan or anything like that, because that's not <br/>me. Besides, I'm sure you could find his website (jimgaffigan.com) on a <br/>search engine if you wanted to go to his website (jimgaffigan.com).<br/><br/><br/>2004-12-09<br/>----------<br/><br/>Darrell Abbott, aka Dimebag Darrell, is dead. It is a sad, sad day.<br/><br/>Just yesterday I was in the mall, holding a Damageplan CD in my hands, <br/>wondering what the ex-Pantera members were up to these days... And then <br/>last night, this happened.<br/><br/>He, along with four others were murdered before a lone police officer <br/>showed up and took down the killer with a shotgun blast to the face.<br/><br/>Darrell was an amazing guitarist. I was glad to see the tributes on <br/>Megadeth.com, Anthrax.com, ZakkWylde.com, and Sepultura.com.br. Very <br/>classy for these musicians to show their respect for this loss.<br/><br/>I sure hope that a rash of copy-cat murders do not break out, but <br/>wouldn't be surprised.<br/><br/><br/>2004-12-08<br/>----------<br/><br/>I just discovered jbidwatcher. Sweet, open-source goodness. For a Java <br/>program, it sure isn't bad. It could be worse.<br/><br/>Hopefully this will help me win a Groovebox for cheap.<br/><br/><br/>2004-12-04<br/>----------<br/><br/>If anyone has any used Grooveboxes, let me know... I'm this -| |- close <br/>to buying one off eBay.<br/><br/><a href="http://icculus.org/~dolson/wishlist">http://icculus.org/~dolson/wishlist</a> (I'll be adding to this soon)<br/><br/><br/>2004-11-17<br/>----------<br/><br/>Holy crap, Megadeth rocked! That is all.<br/><br/><br/>2004-11-11<br/>----------<br/><br/>I am SOOO hooked on getting a Groovebox. If anyone has one or knows a <br/>good cheap place to get one, LET ME KNOW! I'll probably get a Roland <br/>MC-303 to start, but right now I've got a MC-505 on loan for a week... <br/>Trying to not get too stuck to it, but it's gonna be hard.<br/><br/>I didn't get to go to Skinny Puppy yesterday. That sucked. But I'm <br/>counting on them touring again... Here's hoping.<br/><br/>I'm going through all the crap I have and trying to find stuff to sell. <br/>I'll list some things here and on eBay.<br/><br/><br/>2004-10-27<br/>----------<br/><br/>I'm totally against it and offended by it. I'm going out to let my real <br/>talent show, not to just stand there and dance around. Personally, I'd <br/>never lip-synch. It's just not me. -- Ashlee Simpson, Lucky Magazine<br/><br/><br/>2004-10-26<br/>----------<br/><br/>Just bought tickets to Megadeth today. I can't wait to go! Still looking <br/>for a ride to Skinny Puppy too.<br/><br/>I move to a house in 3 days, so this is pretty sweet. We're packing and <br/>stuff, and it's coming along.<br/><br/><br/>2004-10-19<br/>----------<br/><br/>I packed my Xbox away. Moving in two weeks and I haven't touched it <br/>since I got Zelda anyhow.<br/><br/>I got a USB CF card reader today. Read about it here: <br/><a href="http://icculus.org/~dolson/centrioscfreader.html">http://icculus.org/~dolson/centrioscfreader.html</a><br/><br/>Nothing else really new. I'm about to eat my 6th Big Mac of the day.<br/><br/><br/>2004-10-10<br/>----------<br/><br/>A little while back, at the end of September, I got a Gamecube. I didn't <br/>have to pay a dime for it either. I simply traded some old Windows games <br/>for it. Who do you think got the better deal?<br/><br/>I got: Gamecube, cables, controller, MadCatz controller, Super Mario <br/>Sunshine, Memory Card 59, Super Smash Bros. Melee, and Memory Card 16x.<br/><br/>He got: Gettysburg, Populous 3, Starsiege, GTA2, Red Alert, Sanitarium, <br/>Summoner, Nox, Clue (from a cereal box), Fallout, and Aquanox (tossed in <br/>as a freebie as I had two copies anyhow).<br/><br/>The verdict? I think considering I don't run Windows, I got a fantastic <br/>deal. Even if I did run Windows, it's hard to beat this swap.<br/><br/>So now I've forgotten all about Fable and my Xbox in general... I've <br/>been playing Zelda on the 'cube whenever I've had time away from working <br/>on osCommerce and osTickets for my business site that I'm starting up.<br/><br/>If you haven't taken our quick survey, please do.<br/><br/>I'm not very far in Zelda yet. I'm just on my way to Dragon's Roost or <br/>whatever it's called. My wife is playing it right now, and she was stuck <br/>at the three statues, so she asked me to catch up and figure it out, so <br/>I did, then I saved and passed the controller over to her for her to <br/>play. Heh. She didn't realize she could grab the statue and pull it <br/>forward. :)<br/><br/><br/>2004-10-03<br/>----------<br/><br/><a href="http://www.clickycart.com/survey/">http://www.clickycart.com/survey/</a> <-- please do that if you haven't <br/>already. I'm going to start up an online store, and I wanna know what <br/>sorts of things people buy and what they use to pay with. Thanks!<br/><br/>23:54 < mousematt> whats the weather like where u are today?<br/>23:55 < dolson> according to my Gnome applet, it's 9 Celcius and cloudy<br/><br/><br/>2004-09-18<br/>----------<br/><br/>I'm about to try out Fable. I wonder if it'll be good or if it'll <br/>suck...<br/><br/>Well, if it sucks, I can always go listen to the Megadeth album.<br/><br/><br/>2004-09-14<br/>----------<br/><br/>Megadeth's new album rules.<br/><br/><br/>2004-09-12<br/>----------<br/><br/>I just downloaded a video from Megadeth's new album, which was shown on <br/>MTV2, and I was confused... I thought my sound card was dying. Then I <br/>thought that the video was a bad quality TV rip. Then I realized that <br/>MTV bleeps out the words "death" and "high." I could almost, ALMOST, <br/>understand bleeping "high" if the verse referred to drugs, but it <br/>doesn't - the verse is "I can't kick high enough."<br/><br/>This is truly stupid.<br/><br/><br/>2004-08-22<br/>----------<br/>The house is ours.<br/><br/>Someone ported my BattlePong to Xbox! Haha. Here's a link: <br/><a href="http://xhomebrew.netfirms.com/battlepong.shtml">http://xhomebrew.netfirms.com/battlepong.shtml</a> I found out by accident <br/>while checking out an FTP server for a new dashboard. Crazy.<br/><br/><br/>2004-08-20<br/>----------<br/>So today was the inspection for the house we are most likely buying. <br/>Insurance said they would insure the house, our mortgage was approved, <br/>and nothing super major showed up in the inspection report. We'll be <br/>moving in on Nov. 1st, assuming we decide to go ahead and the lawyer <br/>doesn't find any legal issues.<br/><br/>Yesterday the inspector sent over the contract to me in Word .doc <br/>format, and I had asked if he had an alternative format, even a PDF so I <br/>could print it out and he said he didn't. Well, today he came to my <br/>apartment to get his check, and he said "so, you run Linux then?" and <br/>just totally opened himself up for me to lay the smack down. He asked a <br/>couple more questions, and I mentioned that I don't generally worry <br/>about security, viruses, spyware, and so on and explained why. He asked <br/>if it was hard to use, and I asked if he had seen it before. He hadn't. <br/>And now he has... I sat him down in front of my PC and showed him what <br/>his contract looked like in OpenOffice.org, as the formatting is <br/>slightly off. I showed him Evolution. I showed him FireFox and mentioned <br/>that CERT recommended ditching IE for the time being, and that FireFox <br/>works on Windows too. I showed him some different themes for Gnome, and <br/>he seemed impressed. He asked how hard it was to set up. I started <br/>explaining that some hardware might not work, his handheld, printer, and <br/>proprietary software might not work, and so on. I was just being honest <br/>about it. He said "that's alright, I could probably run Linux on my home <br/>network and it'd be fine." So, who knows? Maybe it's the start of <br/>something. :) I just emailed him the links to Gnoppix and Knoppix as he <br/>requested when I mentioned these distros, and I also included a lot of <br/>other info, and offered assistance if he wanted it.<br/><br/>This really does feel like a religion and like I just got someone saved. <br/>It's sorta scary.<br/><br/><br/>2004-07-10<br/>----------<br/>I just had to write a note here about how I am feeling right now... <br/>Megadeth is such a great band. Dave Mustaine is one of the coolest <br/>musicians when it comes to being cool with his fans. He posts on the <br/>Megadeth forums, he releases MP3s occasionally, and everything. If <br/>you're a fan, and you didn't know, he's releasing a new album in <br/>September, called The System Has Failed, and he's also releasing all of <br/>the previous records (except KIMB, since it's done already), remixed and <br/>remastered, with bonus tracks, at the end of this month. I feel pretty <br/>sorry that I didn't like Megadeth instantly upon hearing them, but I was <br/>blind at the time, and thought that Metallica were a superior band. It <br/>isn't so - listen to the musical detail and the vocals. James is a great <br/>singer, but Dave is just better. At least that's my opinion.<br/><br/>Oh, and I recorded a new track too. I'll be releasing it on the RiviR <br/>website soon, once my wife is done recording her vocals, and I give the <br/>song a title.<br/><br/><br/>2004-06-27<br/>----------<br/><br/>So my co-workers and I like gimping each other's faces onto pictures. <br/>Well, now we have a website to allow easy access to these things. Check <br/>it out at www.gimpdesk.tk and leave some comments if you like. Trust me, <br/>the pictures are funnier when you know these guys... So you might not <br/>even wanna bother.<br/><br/>Time to go play Showdown for the first time.<br/><br/><br/>2004-06-22<br/>----------<br/><br/>So I call my ISP (Sympatico) when I get home from work, because their <br/>DNS servers were not working. I couldn't ping even yahoo.ca, but I did <br/>have an IP address on my ppp0. Well, I call them up, and I ask if their <br/>DNS servers are down. Apparently they were not aware of any problems. I <br/>told him that I couldn't ping yahoo.ca, but I was assigned an IP <br/>address, and there is traffic on the ppp interface. He confirmed with <br/>me, "So you can't browse a webpage, right?" I said "right." Because I <br/>couldn't. So he's like "okay, let me pull up the info for Can't Browse a <br/>Website." I tried pinging again, and it started to work. I said "oh, <br/>nevermind, it's working now. But just for reference, can I confirm that <br/>I have the correct DNS IP addresses?" And he says "I can tell you how to <br/>get your email...?? Will that help?"<br/><br/>...<br/><br/>......<br/><br/>"No, it's working. I just want to know if I have the proper DNS <br/>addresses or not," I replied.<br/>"I don't know what you mean," he argued.<br/>"I just need to know the IP address for your DNS servers."<br/>"Okay, just a minute."<br/><br/>Then he puts me on hold for a bit. When he gets back, he says, "okay, <br/>it's 192 dot 168 dot 2 dot 1."<br/>"Really?" I exclaimed, puzzled at how he would guess me internal LAN's <br/>DNS server address, which was incorrect, but oh, so close.<br/>"That's what they tell me," was his reply.<br/><br/>The End.<br/><br/><br/>2004-06-07<br/>----------<br/><br/>So I sit here waiting for the Calgary Flames to get their act together <br/>and win the Stanley Cup. It ain't gonna happen. So close, yet so far <br/>away. I'm used to let-downs. I work on HelpDesk for TeleSpectrum.<br/><br/><br/>2004-06-05<br/>----------<br/><br/>So I sit here waiting for the Calgary Flames to start off this game 6 of <br/>the Stanley Cup final versus the Tampa Bay Lightning. My prediction is <br/>that Calgary will pull it off tonight, but it will be a great game. So <br/>sad for Tampa, but I don't care! I just want Canada to get a Cup again. <br/>It's been many years since we did... And Montreal doesn't count. Don <br/>Cherry rules, and this might be the last time I see him on Hockey Night <br/>in Canada... And he's going out with style - a huge-ass hat with the <br/>Canadian flag on it... C'mon Calgary, do it for our country.<br/><br/>I've been playing Thief: Deadly Shadows lately, and I'm so glad that I <br/>have an Xbox. It's the only real first-person game that I can stand to <br/>play without a keyboard and mouse combo. It's got some subtle <br/>improvements over the older PC-only predecessors that make for a much <br/>smoother game... I love it.<br/><br/>I've been working on Battle Tic Tac Toe again now that I have a laptop. <br/>Progress reports are up on www.scapegoatsoftware.com in the Developer <br/>Journal section (look under Projects).<br/><br/>Still no donations for my plastic surgery...<br/><br/><br/>2004-05-15<br/>----------<br/><br/>I have now watched An Evening With Kevin Smith four times. I just love<br/>it... I don't... know... why.<br/><br/>Also, if you feel like donating money to my Make Dana Look Like Mr. Bean<br/>Fund, I accept PayPal payments at dana@mandrakeusers.org and I'd also<br/>accept cash, check, or money order.<br/><br/><br/>2004-04-08<br/>----------<br/><br/>I may be recording some new material this weekend, inspired by Skinny <br/>Puppy's reformation. Until it is released, check this out:<br/><br/> (18:15:19) rad89: man do you know where i can get the cd key <br/> for microsfot works 7.0<br/> (18:15:29) DOlson: www.openoffice.org<br/><br/>I learned today that the only thing better than my Burger King Whopper <br/>is someone else's.<br/><br/><br/>2004-04-05<br/>----------<br/><br/>New Skinny Puppy album makes me really happy... It opens the doors to <br/>possibilites that I had only dreamed about... I hope they come to <br/>Canada, so I know when to book my vacation.<br/><br/><br/>2004-03-26<br/>----------<br/><br/>Just got off the phone with a cool chick from Nintendo. Here's a tip to <br/>all you foreigners: selling pirated and hacked GameBoy Advance games on <br/>eBay is NOT COOL. You rip me off, you leave me with no choice...<br/><br/><br/>2004-03-17<br/>----------<br/><br/>And back to Debian I go. SmoothWall decided it doesn't want to see my <br/>NICs anymore, and the day before, it decided to turn off my Internet <br/>conenction just because it can. Well, screw that.<br/><br/><br/>2004-03-14<br/>----------<br/><br/>So the power went out for an hour and a half in a good portion of the <br/>city today, killing my 212-day uptime... So I tried out a SmoothWall <br/>install, and it's working well, except the IP spoof protection... I'll <br/>have to set up a DMZ. It's all good.<br/><br/><br/>2004-03-09<br/>----------<br/><br/>I decided I will write Unreal 3 in VBscript. Transgaming will probably <br/>get the vbscript.exe stuff working great in Linux by the time I'm done.<br/><br/><br/>2004-02-23<br/>----------<br/><br/>I don't know why I am admitting this, but I really love That 70s Show...<br/><br/><br/>2004-01-11<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, I have accepted a position on XboxAddict.com as an <br/>interviewer/reviewer/previewer. I'm working on my first review, which <br/>will be of The Hobbit. A game that nobody liked except for me... I will <br/>get free games once my trial membership is over, so that's good - the <br/>less stuff I gotta pay for, the better. It's fun doing reviews and <br/>interviews, and if I can get free games or free previews of games, all <br/>the better.<br/><br/>In other news, I did actually complete The Hobbit, and this weekend I <br/>played through Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance again, in preparation for <br/>the sequel's release later this month.<br/><br/><br/>2004-01-02<br/>----------<br/><br/>There's always something good goin' down at Mr. Sub.<br/><br/><br/>2003-12-28<br/>----------<br/><br/>So I got some money for Christmas, and bought a nice 27" Sanyo TV with <br/>S-Video and component inputs, as well as the standard composite inputs. <br/>I also got a high-definition pack for the Xbox, so now I need an optical <br/>audio receiver!! :) Been mostly watching movies lately, such as LOTR and <br/>stuff. Picked up Jurrasic Park for $4.66 at Wal-Mart too. Oh yeah, my TV <br/>was regular $379, but we got $100 off on Boxing Day... Gotta love that <br/>Boxing Day. :)<br/><br/>Maybe next year I'll buy a real bed!<br/><br/><br/>2003-11-23<br/>----------<br/><br/>Perogies + Deep Fryer = Dynamite Idea.<br/><br/>Try it!<br/><br/>Oh, and onion rings are Hard To Make. At least the recipe I tried didn't <br/>work out well at all...<br/><br/><br/>2003-11-13<br/>----------<br/><br/>Just when I get Star Choice hooked up and working, something has to rip <br/>my attention away from it... I figured that would happen.<br/><br/>I got The Hobbit for Xbox today, as an early Christmas gift... I only <br/>got it new because that way I got the free copy of The Hobbit novel too, <br/>for preordering. Well, this game is quite good. It's cartoony, not as <br/>bad as Zelda: The Wind Wanker or that new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles <br/>game, but certainly not realistic. It doesn't matter. It's still good. <br/>Some elements in it remind me a LOT of The Simpsons Hit & Run game, such <br/>as the picking up of the coins and whatnot without necessarily touching <br/>them. That's a nice feature, IMHO. So far, I haven't gotten far in the <br/>game, as I wanna take my time. I have until January to play this, at <br/>which point I will (hopefully) have a new game to play - Baldur's Gate: <br/>Dark Alliance 2. But until then, playing as Biblo will likely take up a <br/>lot of what little free time I have these days.<br/><br/>My new-ish job is going well. I'm taking calls all day long, I'm <br/>learning new things, getting more comfortable. On top of that, today was <br/>pizza day - the head of IT, who happens to work just feet away from our <br/>division (as opposed to in a different country with some of the other <br/>divisions) whipped out a credit card (the company's card, I hope) and <br/>ordered 7 pizzas, like 24 cans of pop, plates, napkins, dipping sauce... <br/>It was good. I wish I could have eaten more though. I should have <br/>brought a couple slices home, except that I had my mind on other things <br/>when I was walking out the door... Namely, The Hobbit.<br/><br/><br/>2003-10-31<br/>----------<br/><br/>"Now Fox has a new rule that we can't do those little fake news crawls <br/>on the bottom of the screen in a cartoon because it might confuse the <br/>viewers into thinking it's real news."<br/> -- Matt Groening<br/><br/>Uhh... The Simpsons is a CARTOON. Fox doesn't think much of their <br/>viewers, if they think that we will confuse a cartoon with an actual <br/>news feed...<br/><br/>Oh yeah, so I ordered Star Choice (satellite TV) yesterday... Yay.<br/><br/><br/>2003-10-28<br/>----------<br/><br/>"WOW THAT WAS FAST SHIPPING! ATTTTTTTTTTTTT"<br/> -- Feedback left on eBay<br/><br/>My question is: are Ts better than pluses?<br/><br/><br/>2003-10-26<br/>----------<br/><br/>"See, you people say you have enough consoles, and a powerful PC, but <br/>whenever a new console comes out, you people always buy it."<br/> -- Robert Shambro, Infinium Labs<br/><br/>That is all.<br/><br/><br/>2003-10-18<br/>----------<br/><br/>Okay, so I went and got my CPIC for job #2 today, and my interview is <br/>scheduled for Monday... I go to work today, and find out that job #1 <br/>decides that they want me (yay! I got the position I wanted) so now I <br/>have a useless CPIC that cost me $10 but I had to get it else Murphy <br/>would have laid the smack down on me and cost me both job #1 and job #2, <br/>and then job #3 likely wouldn't have panned out either because I haven't <br/>called them back in over a week... But, since I have job #1, that means <br/>I get to start Monday and make a salary, and I don't have to telemarket <br/>anymore! I'm working in my field as a help desk technician, with options <br/>for future specialization in different areas such as NT admin and so <br/>forth. I'll update you all sometime to let you know how I like it.<br/>:D <-- that's me!<br/><br/><br/>2003-10-14<br/>----------<br/><br/>So last night a friend of mine who works for a hosting company convinced <br/>me to register a domain. So, www.scapegoatsoftware.com is now online. :)<br/><br/>I gotta go get my CPIC done soon, else I can't get that other job.<br/><br/><br/>2003-10-11<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, it's been a while since I've updated this thing. Still waiting to <br/>hear about that Help Desk job. I have another interview for a Business <br/>Desk Analyst on the 20th, and I think I'm going to take it, even though <br/>it's only part-time, because it's more in-line with my field than <br/>telefrickinmarketing...<br/><br/>Anyhow, onto the good stuff...<br/><br/>Scapegoat Software is now working on Battle Tic Tac Toe. I'm the <br/>programmer (*ack* *cough* *hack*), and all the graphics are pretty much <br/>ready. Emmett is set to do the sound track, and if we think we can sell <br/>16 copies+ of this game, then we're probably gonna go for it... This way <br/>we can pay Emmett and start making a bit of cash. But we aren't entirely <br/>sure yet. Anyhow, information, developer journal, screenshots, etc are <br/>all up on our site: <a href="http://sgoats.cjb.net/">http://sgoats.cjb.net/</a><br/><br/>If you'd be interested in purchasing this game for $10 (download) or $15 <br/>(on CD, shipped to your home), then please PLEASE let me know. You can <br/>email me at dolson@icculus.org, and that way we can judge if this game <br/>should go commercial or not. Thanks in advance.<br/><br/><br/>2003-09-21<br/>----------<br/><br/>I had an interview for Help Desk Technician, and it went well. I want <br/>that job. Or any job. As long as I can stop telemarketing. Bring it on, <br/>I'm ready. I can take it. PLEASE!<br/><br/>So, here's my Linux-related prediction: Transgaming will stop supporting <br/>Linux and switch business plans to become competition for MacSoft... <br/>Yeah, that's my prediction. So, if it happens, remember, you heard it <br/>here first. :)<br/><br/><br/>2003-09-13<br/>----------<br/><br/>< me> Hi, this is Dana Olson calling on behalf of SBC, how are you <br/>today?<br/>< dude> Hi, I'm on that Do Not Call list.<br/>< me> You're on our Do Not Call list?<br/>< dude> No, I'm on the National Do Not Call list.<br/>< me> Oh, the one that takes effect on October 1st.<br/>< dude> ...<br/>< me> ... It's September right now...<br/>< dude> ...<br/>< me> So we are allowed to call you until October...<br/>< dude> ... Okay, send me the info in the mail.<br/>< me> I will do that, and you have a great night. Thanks for speaking <br/>with SBC.<br/><br/>Yes, that conversation actually took place tonight. I just thought I'd <br/>share, even if no one sees any humor value in it. :)<br/><br/>Anyhow, I've got an interview for an inbound call center on Tuesday. If <br/>I'm offered the position there, I'm about 99% sure that I'm going to <br/>take it. The pay is better, and I can finally get out of calling people <br/>during their dinner. And just in time for the National Do Not Call list <br/>to take effect. :)<br/><br/>Today I had an information session at a consulting firm, and I all but <br/>have the position for supply business desk analyst... I'd be doing <br/>password resets mostly to start, and that's FINE by me. I hope that I <br/>can work it all out around my schedule, whatever it will be then, so <br/>that I can do it on the side (it's a supply position, so no guaranteed <br/>hours at all) of a regular job for a while. I think I have some <br/>decisions to make soon. It's exciting, while unsettling at the same <br/>time, since I don't want to alienate any of my opportunities... <br/>Decisions, decisions...<br/><br/><br/>2003-09-10<br/>----------<br/><br/>07:16 < LordHavoc> I just love knowledge, I try to absorb everything<br/>07:17 <+sibn> knowledge is kind of a pain in the ass to maintain, though.<br/>07:17 <+warthawg> I have some catlitter like that<br/><br/>Heh. Joe Barr has his moments (none of which appear on LinuxWorld.com).<br/><br/>In other news, I had a test at a different call center, and they know <br/>that I want a tech position. Hopefully something comes of that. Also, I <br/>have an information session at a consulting company, the one that I <br/>really wanted to work at when I first moved here, and they are hiring <br/>someone for part-time. Hopefully they want me. Also, my current place of <br/>employment is hiring a help desk technician, but unfortunately, they <br/>require a driver's license and a vehicle, which I don't have/can't <br/>afford. Well, here's hoping they don't care so much about that.<br/><br/><br/>2003-08-25<br/>----------<br/><br/>God, do I hate my job. Not only does the job suck, but the company <br/>decided that my Monday off will now become a MANDATORY work day. To top <br/>that off, I was in the top 18 in my group, so I gotta go in at 2PM and <br/>stay until 10PM. I signed up to work from 5PM to 12AM. This is a rip, I <br/>want my money back-- erm... Fooey. Someone hook me up with a better job.<br/><br/>I was playing Morrowind a bit today too. I'm not very far into the game, <br/>even though it's the only Xbox game I own, but yeah, I do plan on <br/>finishing it someday, if such a thing is possible... I haven't finished <br/>a game since... Oh gee, what was it... Return to Krondor, I think. Boy, <br/>that was a great game... I would love a third one in that series, as <br/>long as it was like RTK, and not like the first one. Oh, and as long as <br/>it was on Linux or Xbox.<br/><br/><br/>2003-08-18<br/>----------<br/><br/>So it's been one year since I deleted my Windows 98 partition. Yay me.<br/><br/>I'm trying to get time to record more music, but until then, there will <br/>be two songs on my mp3.com page, once the second one gets approved.<br/><br/>Time to get ready for work. And I thought today was going well...<br/><br/><br/>2003-08-12<br/>----------<br/><br/>03:07 <+Mongoose> it's pretty damn sad I've read more stories in <br/>morrowind than r/l<br/><br/>So, my weekend was alright. Other than my wife getting glass in her <br/>foot, and thereby we were forced to buy crutches. Geez.<br/><br/>Anyhow, I finally finished recording "Again" and most of "So Perfect" <br/>which will be on my album "hopefear" someday... Someday soon.<br/><br/><br/>2003-08-06<br/>----------<br/><br/>23:51 < lgp-michael|svrm> coool a cat just wandered into the house<br/>23:51 <+dolson> < lgp-michael|svrm> mmm.. I can eat today<br/><br/>23:59 < floam> i can see lgp-michael|svrm sitting in the living room <br/>dressing up his linux games and having them talk to each other<br/>00:00 < lgp-michael|svrm> I cant dress them up, I cant afford to, they <br/>have imaginary clothes<br/><br/>MUST... PLAY... MOHAA... BUT... CAN'T...<br/><br/><br/>2003-08-03<br/>----------<br/><br/>Okay, here are some tips for you irritable Americans:<br/><br/>- When a Telemarketer calls your home, they are not doing so to be <br/>assholes about it.<br/>- If you don't want the service at the present time, and this is what <br/>you tell them, they WILL call you back.<br/>- Chances are good that these Telemarketers are people like me: <br/>desperate to make money to pay bills and rent. These people are not <br/>trying to upset you, but rather they are trying to do their job.<br/>- They most likely work for a call center, which is contracted to call <br/>on behalf of other companies... You probably don't get the relevance of <br/>this fact, but I will get to this...<br/>- If you don't want to be bothered anymore, ask NICELY to be put onto <br/>the DO NOT CALL list. Here is an example of how you would do so: in a <br/>nice voice, say "Can you put me on your do not call list?" and the <br/>Telemarketer will gladly oblige. This is required by law. If another <br/>Telemarketer calls you, it MIGHT NOT BE FROM THE SAME COMPANY! So there <br/>is no sense getting all pissed off at them. Also, it usually takes about <br/>4 to 6 weeks to have your name fully removed from any given company's <br/>calling lists.<br/>- If you don't want any more calls from a given telemarketing firm, ASK <br/>the Telemarketer on the phone what company they are employed by. Many <br/>times, the Telemarketer will give you a different name than the company <br/>they are representing, because that's just how this business works. Tell <br/>them to put your name on THEIR do not call list, and then you won't get <br/>any calls from that firm for a full five years, as required by law.<br/>- The trick is to be nice about it, and MAKE SURE that they do take you <br/>off the list. Don't hang up until you have your name off the list. <br/>- Do NOT lie to Telemarketers. They do not hold anything personally <br/>against you. There is no need to lie to them. If you don't want to be <br/>bothered, you know what your options are, so DO NOT TELL THEM TO CALL <br/>BACK AT A LATER TIME.<br/>- Telemarketers call people randomly, from lists given by the company <br/>they represent. Just because you don't like the service or product <br/>being offered, doesn't mean that the next call won't become a sale. If <br/>you aren't interested, don't waste the Telemarketer's time and your <br/>time, just put your name on the DO NOT CALL list, and be done with it.<br/>- Don't say you are not interested before you have heard what the offer <br/>is. I could call someone randomly one day, offering $1 Million dollars <br/>FOR FREE, and probably 9 out of 10 Americans would hang up on me before <br/>I even told them what I was offering them. The point is, YOU CAN'T KNOW <br/>IF YOU ARE INTERESTED OR NOT UNTIL YOU'VE HEAR WHAT WE'RE OFFERING. <br/>TARD.<br/>- Last, but not least, NEVER ask for a a Telemarketer's HOME phone <br/>number. Honestly, you just look like a moron when you do. Do you really <br/>think that a Telemarketer has access to the internal systems required to <br/>set you up with whatever service they are offering from whatever company <br/>they are representing FROM THEIR OWN HOME? No, this would be a very <br/>suspicious thing, allowing people to work from home like that... In a <br/>professional company, the Telemarketers should be required to fully <br/>comply with the full security measures and confidentiality <br/>regulations... By asking for a Telemarketer's home phone number, you <br/>appear as someone who hasn't got a clue how a reputable business should <br/>be run, and you obviously thought you were being a smart ass, when you <br/>really were just a dumb ass.<br/><br/><br/>2003-07-27<br/>----------<br/><br/>So I turned 22 yesterday. Yay and all that. We ordered pizza and watched <br/>a couple movies. It was good. My dad even called me twice.<br/><br/>I've been working on a song a bit, trying to rekindle my love of <br/>creating music, but I'm struggling. I've been out of it for too long.<br/><br/>I'm working now, doing telemarketing. Not sure how long I'll be doing <br/>this stuff, because of many reasons... I could get fired, I might not be <br/>able to cope with the stress, I might get a job in my field... But at <br/>least it's money in the meantime.<br/><br/>My wife thinks it's amusing, but I seem to remember everyone's eye <br/>color... Well, not everyone, but almost everyone. I guess it is kinda <br/>weird.<br/><br/>Anyhow, I'm going back to write some lyrics and work on song structure <br/>now. Until next time...<br/><br/><br/>2003-07-18<br/>----------<br/><br/>I don't know what to do now. I could work in telemarketing, and possibly <br/>go mad in the process, or I could continue on my job search... I really <br/>want to work for Sony, but as my luck goes, I won't be chosen for that <br/>job. I need money soon. If I don't take the telemarketing job, I could <br/>never get one there again. I don't agree with telemarketing, and I can't <br/>see myself actually being able to do what they want you to do there. I <br/>just don't know what to do, what to say, or what to think... I'd be <br/>stupid to pass up a job, but what is the point of taking on a job that <br/>you are 99% sure you can't handle?<br/><br/>I have to make a decision soon. Decisions suck. Life sucks.<br/><br/><br/>2003-07-17<br/>----------<br/><br/>Watching movies has become my new hobby. And from that, I have the new <br/>hobby webpage, DOlson's Magical Fantastical Movie Reviews! Check it out<br/>at <a href="http://aslan.no-ip.com/">http://aslan.no-ip.com/</a><br/><br/>So my 22nd birthday is rapidly approaching, only nine days away, and<br/>I'm really hoping to be employed by then so we can go out for dinner. My <br/>wife had an interview today, as did I, and I have to go back tomorrow <br/>for a test and some paid training. Not sure when I'll know if I'm hired <br/>on there, but it's telemarketing... Something I'm not sure I could deal <br/>with for very long. I have my second interview at the Sony store on <br/>Sunday, and boy, do I hope that works out. I'd really love to work <br/>there.<br/><br/>00:10 < dolson> oh how I wish I was young again.<br/>00:10 < dolson> I bet you feel the same<br/>00:10 <@msphil> Can't remember what it was like.<br/><br/><br/>2003-07-07<br/>----------<br/><br/>I just discovered that two guys I used to jam with are living in the <br/>same city as me. That's pretty cool, considering one of them works where <br/>I've been applying. I'm going to contact the other guy tomorrow <br/>probably, and see what he's been up to. He's in a cool band now called <br/>Pinkslip, and they sound really cool. I hope I get to meet up with them <br/>again and jam a bit. Who knows, perhaps I'll get into a band myself <br/>again.<br/><br/><br/>2003-06-24<br/>----------<br/><br/>Home after another weekend visiting family... And getting an Xbox. I got a <br/>used one for about $100 cheaper than getting it new. Also, any games I get <br/>will be pre-owned as well, and this way, none of the stuff I buy will <br/>count as sales for Microsoft and co. And that's advice straight from the <br/>CEO of some Linux game publishing company too. It also saves money, since <br/>new games are bloody expensive.<br/><br/>I sold my copy of Win98SE along with some hardware, including a 15GB hard <br/>drive, a CD-ROM drive, and a USB graphics tablet, in order to pay for the <br/>Xbox... I got the DVD remote and an extra controller (both model S) with <br/>it, so it was a really good deal.<br/><br/>I've watched a few episodes of Family Guy on it, and life is good. I <br/>opened it up last night and put in a 30GB drive, and it was easy to set up <br/>and all that... The old 8GB is now in my PC, as secondary master, for <br/>backing up my documents and stuff. I still have my 80GB drive for my Linux <br/>(with 40GB partitioned for /usr/local/games).<br/><br/>My wife likes to play the old Super Mario games too, so it's actually won <br/>her favor, I think. And she seemed to like the looks of a few games at EB, <br/>such as Morrowind and stuff...<br/><br/>Interesting that, moreso than any other group of Windows users I can think <br/>of, Xbox users seem to be open to the idea of trying Linux. One guy on <br/>EFnet decided to give Debian a shot after I told him a little bit about <br/>apt-get... Every day or two he'll message me with questions, and I answer <br/>them to the best of my ability. He's not the only one, either. It seems to <br/>me that a lot of Xbox users are semi-literate when it comes to Linux. <br/>Maybe I'm dreaming, and perhaps that is the case in any IRC channel, but I <br/>don't remember it being like that before.<br/><br/>Anyhow.<br/><br/>Apologies to those of you who may have read this and hate me now.<br/><br/>In better news, job prospects at EB are looking fairly good, and if I get <br/>in, I'll see about getting some Linux games onto our shelves... Not sure <br/>how realistic that idea is, but hey, I can always try. I went in there <br/>today and was pimping Linux, Ryan, LGP, id, and so forth to the guy in <br/>there... He seemed impressed at the number of OSes that I've tried, and he <br/>himself seemed to have a bit of knowledge of Linux, BeOS, and FreeBSD <br/>even, so I may have been preaching to the choir...<br/><br/>My wife gets interviewed for a management position at some store later <br/>this week, so here's hoping that goes well... I applied to RadioShack and <br/>The Sony Store, and hoping that one of them (preferrably the later) will <br/>call me if EB doesn't do it first.<br/><br/>More job hunting to do tomorrow... Fun stuff.<br/><br/><br/>2003-06-11<br/>----------<br/><br/>Okay, so the trolls cleared out, yadda yadda.<br/><br/>Let me say, Metallica have proven to me that they do care about their<br/>fans more than people give them credit for. Their new album is MUCH<br/>better than their last two, comes with a free DVD, a cool case, and an<br/>access code to their file sharing site, Metallica Vault. Right now there<br/>are about 49 free songs to download, all of live concerts, and they will<br/>add more soon, and possibly even videos and stuff. This new album was<br/>well worth the $19.99 CAD I paid, and friends of mine paid only $12.99<br/>at Best Buy (wish we had one here).<br/><br/>I'm thinking of getting an Xbox as soon as I can afford it. Before you<br/>jump down my throat, realize that I don't really care as to why you think<br/>I shouldn't get one. I know the reasons why I shouldn't get one, as far<br/>as the rest of the world is concerned, but honestly, for the same price<br/>as a PS2, I don't think there is any better deal than an Xbox. I want<br/>it for playing NES, SNES, TG-16, Game Boy, and PSone games all with one<br/>box, one controller, and one power button. On top of that, and perhaps <br/>more importantly, I want it for media - DVD and DivX playback, coupled <br/>with Dolby Digital 5.1 support, I don't think there is any reason NOT to <br/>get an Xbox. Sure, tell me to go buy a PC or whatever. Just because you <br/>can't admit that Microsoft did something right for a change, doesn't mean <br/>I'm going to listen to you. There, I've said my peace.<br/><br/>So now I'm sharing a *gasp* Debian PC with my wife (she hates everything<br/>but Mandrake) because her motherboard decided to quit functioning. Just <br/>what we needed in the middle of a job search... Luckily, setting up her <br/>printer in Debian was easier than I thought (thanks ashridah for the <br/>inital help with CUPS). Our answering machine died with a message on it,<br/>then ressurrected itself a day later, but the message was gone. I *really*<br/>hope that wasn't a job offer...<br/><br/>Oh yeah, Gnome is getting better as the days go by, including Nautilus'<br/>script folder. Mmm... So nice, so nice...<br/><br/><br/>2003-05-22<br/>----------<br/><br/>I've decided I don't really like hanging out in the icculus.org channel<br/>anymore. Over the past week it has degerated into a troll breeding<br/>ground, and it's really just annoying as hell being in there.<br/><br/>Sure, some got kickbanned, but some are sitting on the borderline, not<br/>doing enough to get kicked, but enough to annoy the shit out of you.<br/><br/>Perhaps someday I'll check back in and see what's up. I don't know.<br/><br/><br/>2003-05-10<br/>----------<br/><br/>Decisions, decisions! Should I order a mod chip? Should I risk killing<br/>my over-the-counter-replacement warranty? Where should I order from<br/>that will ship to Canada quickly? Grr...<br/><br/>Oh yeah, I'm still looking for a job.<br/><br/><br/>2003-05-07<br/>----------<br/><br/>Ok. All settled here in North Bay now, and on the hunt for a job. If<br/>you want to hire me, email me. :)<br/><br/>Anyhow, this place is infinitely larger than my old apartment, and the<br/>air is clean and nice... The turtles needed a larger aquarium, so we got<br/>one that is three feet long... That oughtta do it for now.<br/><br/>So I wiped FreeBSD and put Gentoo on top of where it was... After 7<br/>hours of compiling everything, I had X and that's about it. Then it took<br/>a long LONG time to compile some things that I usually use all the time,<br/>such as Evolution, XChat, Gimp, Gaim, Quanta, and so on. And to top it<br/>all off, it's not even faster than Debian! Sure, bootup is a lot faster,<br/>and the fact that it compiles everything is cool, but uh, it takes way<br/>too long to maintain it, and OpenBox takes longer to start up than in<br/>Debian... And if you use OpenBox, you know that it *should* be hard to<br/>notice a difference in OpenBox's startup time. I guess it's a combination<br/>of X and OpenBox... In any case, I don't think I'll be switching to<br/>Gentoo at this point in time... But I haven't used it enough yet to make<br/>that decision. Stay tuned to my adventures. :)<br/><br/>Anyhow, yeah, did I mention I'm looking for work?<br/><br/><br/>2003-04-29<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, tomorrow is my last day in Toronto. Our new apartment is much<br/>larger, and I can't wait to get there. I hope my internet connection<br/>comes back online quickly once I'm there.<br/><br/>Also, today I invented a new recipe:<br/><br/>Beefy Cheese Fries<br/><br/>Cook up one pound of ground beef in a frying pan.<br/>Put a half a bag of fries in the oven to bake at about 450.<br/>Drain the beef and put it on top of the fries when they are ready.<br/>Grate a half-block of marble cheese, and load it on top while the fries<br/>and beef are still hot.<br/>Yummy!<br/><br/>Makes one serving.<br/><br/><br/>2003-04-20<br/>----------<br/><br/>I wrote an article for LinuxHardware.org about Linux gaming. They<br/>would like me to write more, so hopefully I will get to do some reviews<br/>of some cool hardware.<br/><br/><br/>2003-03-26<br/>----------<br/><br/>Okay, so some new stuff is going down with me.<br/><br/>Firstly, I got my preliminary marks back from my final semester of<br/>college, and although they aren't so hot, I didn't fail any of my<br/>classes, so I have no rewrites!! w00t. This means that shortly, I<br/>shall have a second college diploma:<br/> * Computer Network Engineering Technician<br/> * Computer Network Engineering Technologist<br/>That's a lot of good news.<br/><br/>Next, BioWare finally released a beta of Neverwinter Nights! It<br/>runs pretty well on my Debian system, and I've filed 4 bug reports<br/>so far. On my wife's Mandrake system, it was running fine. This<br/>brings me to the third update:<br/><br/>Mandrake released version 9.1 of their distro. I'm sick of hearing<br/>all the "boycott teh french! boycott teh Manbrake Lunix!!11" crap<br/>on Slashdot and other various places... Mandrake 9.1 is easily<br/>the best distro there is right now. Unless you like multiple-hour<br/>installation processes (in which case, I recommend Debian or<br/>Slackware), give Mandrake a shot. The speed amazed me, and as much<br/>as it is tempting me to install it, I just love apt too much. I<br/>can't ditch Debian, as it is easy to upgrade - the only thing<br/>that Mandrake really lacks. I started to go through the 9.0 -> 9.1<br/>upgrade process, but I hit reset halfway through. It just felt too<br/>much like I was wasting my time.<br/><br/>Now, if Mandrake 9.1 would just co-operate with ravage's installer,<br/>or
.plan update from dolson, 2007-02-20 15:24:48
https://icculus.org/finger/dolson?date=2007-02-20&time=15-24-48
Tue, 20 Feb 2007 15:24:48 -0500
--------------------Chunky-Kibbles-Measure-Line-------------------------<br/><br/>Current Projects and Websites<br/>-----------------------------<br/>> <a href="http://www.wiisels.com/">http://www.wiisels.com/</a> (This is a Wii game release date calendar for NA)<br/>> <a href="http://www.rivironline.com/">http://www.rivironline.com/</a> (This is music I create myself as RIVIR)<br/>> <a href="http://www.ubuntustudio.com/">http://www.ubuntustudio.com/</a> (This is my wiki for Ubuntu musicians)<br/>> <a href="http://icculus.org/~dolson/wishlist">http://icculus.org/~dolson/wishlist</a> (my wishlist)<br/>> <a href="http://www.scapegoatsoftware.com/">http://www.scapegoatsoftware.com/</a> (This is my programming site)<br/>> <a href="http://gimpdesk.tk/">http://gimpdesk.tk/</a> (This is gimps by me and my ex-co-workers)<br/>> <a href="http://aslan.homelinux.com/dana/movies/">http://aslan.homelinux.com/dana/movies/</a> (My mini movie review site)<br/><br/><br/>2007-02-20<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, today Sonic and the Secret Rings ships for Wii. I'm excited, hoping that<br/>WalMart will have it in stock today... EB Games can suck my left nut, as they<br/>told me that it comes out here on the 28th. Piss on that. I'll order it from<br/>eBay if I can't get it by the end of tomorrow from WalMart.<br/><br/>Also, I launched Wiisels.com, a website for Wii game release dates. Check it<br/>out if you have a Wii and are in North America (sorry everyone else.. I can't<br/>track all the other release dates too, unless other people help me out...<br/>Maybe some day in the future).<br/><br/><br/>2006-12-07<br/>----------<br/><br/>I figured I should put an update here for all zero of my faithful readers.<br/><br/>Well, I am going back to Debian. I don't agree with Mark's actions on the<br/>OpenSUSE mailing list, and the entire thing was a bit of a wake-up call in the<br/>first place. Mark is funding Ubuntu, and if he pulled out at any time, then<br/>where would the distro be? It could carry on, but not nearly in the same<br/>manner as it is now. At least that's my thoughts.. Adding proprietary things<br/>such as the NVIDIA drivers by default is a compromise on free as in speech<br/>freedom, and I think it is not a great plan. Anyhow, maybe I am over-reacting<br/>but I don't really care. Nobody cares who uses what distro anymore, that's so<br/>three years ago.<br/><br/>The Wii is amazingly fun. I love first-person shooters again! Call of Duty 3<br/>is fun to play, and actually, any game is. If you don't have a Wii yet, and<br/>you can afford about $250 US for a new gaming experience, pick one up. I have<br/>not had this much excitement and fun playing games since the SNES. Thanks to<br/>Nintendo and their ideas of shaking up the gaming industry rather than merely<br/>progressing technologically, gaming is fun again.<br/><br/>I do not work for Nintendo. I don't get any reward if you buy a Wii.<br/><br/><br/>2006-09-19<br/>----------<br/><br/>Three months and no update... So much has happened.<br/><br/>Firstly, I don't know what the deal with lilo and diablo-d3 was, and I<br/>don't care. lilo is gone, and that is shitty. My condolences to his<br/>family.<br/><br/>Next up, the Wii has me very excited. I hope to get one at launch.<br/><br/>Also, I have been learning a lot about how to do music with Linux.<br/>This is fun and exciting in it's own right. I will be re-doing all<br/>of my songs in software now, and it's gonna be interesting, if<br/>tedious.<br/><br/>Finally, October will see me travelling to my old city of Toronto to<br/>check out Iron freakin' Maiden! It's been a long time coming. I am<br/>so glad I didn't buy Alice Cooper tickets, even though he's in my city<br/>next month. This is a much better opportunity because although I love<br/>and respect Alice, Iron Maiden has been a much larger influence on me,<br/>musically, and they put on an amazing show, by all accounts. I can't<br/>wait, and my wife is even more stoked than I am.<br/><br/><br/>2006-06-19<br/>----------<br/><br/>There's no such thing as hockey...<br/>There's no such thing as hockey...<br/>There's no such thing as hockey...<br/><br/><br/>2006-06-05<br/>----------<br/><br/>And so it begins.<br/><br/>I really hope that Edmonton can get done what no other Canadian team has <br/>done in recent decades... Take home the Stanley Cup to where it belongs! <br/>Canada. I expect to be disappointed, but there is always hope.<br/><br/><br/>2006-05-26<br/>----------<br/><br/>Now that Google has "ported" Picasa to Linux, I guess everyone can stop <br/>saying that Wine doesn't ruin chances for native ports. It is true <br/>that companies would rather use Wine than put any effort into properly <br/>supporting Linux long-term. Hell, Google didn't even use Winelib, they <br/>used Wine itself! Sure, they contributed some code back to Wine, which <br/>only helps advance Wine. If this keeps happening, it just makes me <br/>wonder why even bother running Linux instead of Windows? Thank <br/>God for F-Spot and other open-source software. Thank God.<br/><br/>F-Spot doesn't look like ass either, like the Win32 app that Picasa is.<br/><br/><br/>2006-05-14<br/>----------<br/><br/>For once, I will do what Sony and Microsoft want me to do. And that is <br/>NOT to buy their products, but instead to buy Nintendo's product.<br/><br/><a href="http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2006-05-11T132519Z_01_N10243836_RTRUKOC_0_US-EXPO-MICROSOFT.xml">http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2006-05-11T132519Z_01_N10243836_RTRUKOC_0_US-EXPO-MICROSOFT.xml</a><br/><a href="http://www.thewiire.com/news/312/1/Sony_Executive_Recommends_Wii_As_Second_Console">http://www.thewiire.com/news/312/1/Sony_Executive_Recommends_Wii_As_Second_Console</a><br/><br/>Hey, if I can't decide which console to buy, I'll just look at what all <br/>three companies are saying to decide.<br/><br/><Microsot> Buy the Wii! It's cool!<br/><Sony> We recommend you get a Wii!<br/><Nintendo> What they said!<br/><Me> Wii it is!<br/><br/><br/>2006-05-09<br/>----------<br/><br/>$500 for a lite PS3? WTF are they smoking? I know for sure now that I <br/>won't be getting one for a long, long time.<br/><br/>Let's hope Nintendo's conference reports the launch date and price, and <br/>that the price is low... $200 or under would have me in the lineups on <br/>release day.<br/><br/><br/>2006-05-05<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, I just finished my first full work week in my new position as a <br/>Perl programmer. After five days, I went from knowing nothing about Perl <br/>outside of what it does, to being able to code some applications, use <br/>modules, read and write to PostgreSQL databases (which I have also never <br/>previously dealt with), and send email. I learned a lot of it on my own <br/>by reading and experimenting, but a large credit goes to the simple, <br/>to-the-point help that I have been given by my fellow programmer who <br/>sits a few feet away from me. I'm well on the road to becoming a real <br/>Perl programmer.<br/><br/>And let me just say that I have been blessed with an awesome work place, <br/>awesome co-workers, and an awesome company. My friends who have moved on <br/>from our last place of employment also claim their new companies are <br/>great, so I am thinking that my previous employer was the exception <br/>rather than the rule, when it comes to employee treatment, business <br/>practices, and employee hiring standards.<br/><br/>There is a cut in pay compared to my last position of around $8600, <br/>which sucks, but I am much happier here, I am not tethered to a <br/>company-issued cell phone, forced to be on-call 24/7, I am not in shift <br/>work, I don't work weekends, etc. I can bring my bike right into the <br/>office and put it into the back room during the day, and the ride there <br/>is only about 10 minutes, 15 if I pedal very leisurely.<br/><br/>A brand new 64-bit system is sitting at my desk - oh yes, it's a desk, <br/>not a cubicle - with an LCD monitor. On top of that, today a co-worker <br/>any I took a trip to Staples and picked out a nice keyboard with more <br/>features than I needed, and a new pointing device - a Logitech optical <br/>trackball, because I prefer to not use mice, as they tend to be too <br/>small for my hands and my pinky and ring fingers cramp.<br/><br/>This morning I got to work, and there was a large Tim Horton's coffee <br/>sitting on my desk, with my name on it. That sort of thing just didn't <br/>happen before, but here this is an almost daily phenomenon - and there <br/>is a stack of paper coffee cup trays in the corner of the room that <br/>reaches the ceiling to prove it.<br/><br/>To top it off, I was informed that at the end of every month, the <br/>company buys pizza for us. So that is awesome, as pizza is my favorite <br/>food. My last place did buy us pizza occasionally, but once they were <br/>bought by that company in Pakistan, those rare occasions seemed to have <br/>stopped. For us in Canada, anyhow.<br/><br/>This new place I am working at is everything that I'm about. They do <br/>webhosting, they are an ISP, a CLEC, they do VoIP with Asterisk, and a <br/>big portion of it is running on Linux, which is fantastic. I don't think <br/>there are any SCO UNIX boxes kicking around either, something I hated at <br/>the last place. I'm even allowed - forced, actually - to run Linux on my <br/>workstation; whichever distro I want. Of course, I put Ubuntu, but <br/>would've been happy even with the company standard of debian.<br/><br/>I've been accepted and welcomed to the company with open arms by <br/>everyone, and it's much less hostile an environment, but things still <br/>seem to get done! The developers actually do come into the office, and <br/>they actually do work. Fathom that! Everyone in the company, which spans <br/>numerous cities, is accessible by 4-digit extensions, so I can quickly <br/>memorize these, as opposed to memorizing many 10-digit numbers over <br/>multiple cities in multiple countries. Yes, everything seems to be much <br/>improved over the previous job.<br/><br/>So, as my previous supervisor, on my final day with the company, had <br/>mentioned it might be, being laid off was definitely a blessing in <br/>disguise. Even after four and a half months of sitting on my couch with <br/>no clue what the future held, collecting government money to attempt to <br/>make ends meet.<br/><br/>Now I don't have to move to another city, I don't have to keep sending <br/>out or delivering resumes and hoping for callbacks, nor do I have to <br/>worry about stress from feeling like a worthless non-contributor to our <br/>household. Now I can stay here where I have a doctor, friends, family, <br/>and a good church. Thank God!<br/><br/>To get onto another topic, E3 starts very soon, and I'm excited as all <br/>getup to see what Nintendo has in store!<br/><br/>That is all for now. :)<br/><br/><br/>2006-04-28<br/>----------<br/><br/>So, just over a month after being rejected by the job I said I wanted as <br/>a Perl developer, I got an unexpected call back, with an offer for the <br/>job. So I start on Monday. I also have been having some weird feelings <br/>in my left side of my throat, so hopefully my doctor listens to me.<br/><br/>I'm excited to get my hands on my Wii! The games that are coming out <br/>will be awesome, and I read an interview with someone from EA, and it <br/>was very interesting to hear about the new Madden. I'm not one for <br/>football, but I think I might try it this time around. EA has a studio <br/>dedicated to the Wii, so that's pretty cool. I am really excited about a <br/>Fight Night game, especially if the attachment also has gyros to detect <br/>motion. That would ROCK.<br/><br/><br/>2006-04-09<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, yesterday I figured out how to cross-compile again in Linux, for <br/>Windows. So that's good, because there is a new project I'm working on <br/>and it will need to run on Windows as well. I'll put more details here <br/>when something is ready for release.<br/><br/><br/>2006-03-19<br/>----------<br/><br/>So, I got an email from Mark Shuttleworth, and there will be a new <br/>Ubuntu derivative distro for multimedia use. He said he'll give me more <br/>details this week. I really hope that it is all in the repos and is <br/>official, and can be installed with apt-get install mubuntu (I assume it <br/>will be called Mubuntu, based on the domain registration).<br/><br/><br/>2006-03-16<br/>----------<br/><br/>I had a job interview today at an ISP/host/CLEC/VoIP/everything company. <br/>The position is for a Jr. Perl developer. I don't know Perl, but I <br/>started looking at it, and it doesn't look like it would take me long to <br/>pick it up. I'm pretty good at that sort of thing, and if I can do PHP <br/>and some C/C++ stuff, I'm sure Perl can't be that hard.<br/><br/>I really want that job. The guys seem really nice, the company seems <br/>stable, and best of all, the programmers use Debian!<br/><br/>I am ashamed that I messed up though. I didn't have my references on me <br/>because I asked a few people for advice, and they said to not bring <br/>anything with me. So I sent them my references through email, but I had <br/>an error on the page. One of my references' job title and employer were <br/>wrong... So I corrected it and sent it in. I hope they don't disqualify <br/>me because of that error. I only corrected it because I am honest and <br/>would not want to get a job by lying. For instance, some of my friends <br/>suggested I just not correct it - they'll never notice! they say. It <br/>would be easy enough to call up my reference and tell him of my error, <br/>and ask him to play it up. But dishonesty isn't the best policy, I <br/>think. So I really, really hope they realize this.<br/><br/>I'll post another update when I find out if I got the job or not... Time <br/>to go read some Perl docs. :)<br/><br/><br/>2006-01-31<br/>----------<br/><br/>Still no job. And ZERO sales of my CD. That's great. Life is so awesome.<br/><br/>I am working on a website for Ubuntu users, namely musicians, who want <br/>to use Ubuntu as a recording studio. You could check it out and <br/>contribute at www.ubuntustudio.com. I've spent one full week on it so <br/>far, and have had very little help.<br/><br/>I've also been talking with some guys from Canonical/Ubuntu and I have <br/>contacted Free from DeMuDi, with regards to getting Ubuntu to the point <br/>where it should be for musicians. This means we need an experimental <br/>kernel patch (obviously not in the main kernel tree for Ubuntu) as an <br/>option, as well as some software that is missing. Any real progress with <br/>this will be notated on my site.<br/><br/><br/>2005-12-05<br/>----------<br/><br/>I have finally put together my demo CD. It's called, "The Demo" and you <br/>can get it for $6.99 Real Money from www.cafepress.com/rivir - also, get <br/>yourself a thong while you're at it!<br/><br/>Only 11 more days left of my current job. Because I was laid off. Along <br/>with 5 others. Basically, our company is being offshored to Pakistan, <br/>the Philippines, Brazil or something like that, and France. Great.<br/><br/>In other news, I've recorded a Christmas song for a compilation that <br/>will also be sold through CafePress shortly. <br/><a href="http://www.cafepress.com/xmascomp">http://www.cafepress.com/xmascomp</a> will be the URL to buy it if you like.<br/><br/><br/>2005-11-16<br/>----------<br/><br/>It appears that the new Xbox 360's power supply is housed in an original <br/>Xbox. I was gonna get an Xbox 360, but I need to build an addition onto <br/>my house just for the power supply:<br/><br/><a href="http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/system/microsoft/xbox360/bundle.jpg">http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/system/microsoft/xbox360/bundle.jpg</a><br/><br/><br/>2005-05-08<br/>----------<br/><br/>I went to Toronto yesterday and ended up coming home with a new Roland <br/>TD-3KV electronic drum kit. Pretty cool stuff.<br/><br/><br/>2005-04-16<br/>----------<br/><br/>Here are most of the remaining mini-reviews. There are one or two that I <br/>haven't got to yet though. I'll add them later on.<br/><br/>Wyrick - Mental Floss<br/>Travis Wyrick is pretty cool, from everything I've heard to date. He did <br/>some good work on Gretchen's disc too. But, I can't help but wonder if <br/>his blatant rip offs of Trent Reznor go unnoticed... Have a listen to <br/>Sacrifice and compare to NIN's The Perfect Drug. I see similarities. But <br/>even worse, is a track that's not on Mental Floss, called More of You. <br/>If you can check that out, compare it to NIN's song Wish, and tell me <br/>that it's not lifted material... Anyhow, all that aside, I really like <br/>Wyrick, and even like those songs too. And hey, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe <br/>Travis came up with those melodys and chord progressions on his own <br/>without ever hearing the NIN songs. But somehow I doubt it, as even the <br/>other material reminds me of other bands/songs, but I can't place them <br/>all.<br/><br/>Grammatrain - Lonely House<br/>I knew most of the songs on this disc from MP3s I had from AudioGalaxy's <br/>free days. The main difference is that these are not live versions, so <br/>they sound a lot better. Some songs remind me of bands like Silverchair <br/>(specifically the track Execution). I don't mind these guys, but they <br/>aren't going to get tons of play in my CD player, at least not when I <br/>have CDs from bands like [null factor] and Oil.<br/><br/>Oil - Refine<br/>Wow! Awesome metal band. After hearing only the first track, I knew that <br/>they were closing in on Megadeth for my favorite metal band, and my wife <br/>said ealy on in the disc that she liked them more than Metallica (I keep <br/>telling her Metallica blows, but she doesn't listen). Anyhow, if you <br/>like metal, check out Oil. Sadly they've disbanded, but this disc is <br/>still worth getting. Global Warning is great too.<br/><br/>Ultimatum - Puppet of Destruction<br/>I'm not sure why I ordered this. I guess I was hoping for some great <br/>metal, but I should've checked out some samples or something first, <br/>because I can't stand the vocals. The drums and bass could use a lot of <br/>low-end boost. Maybe they'll grow on me, I dunno.<br/><br/>Torn Skin - Violence and Technology<br/>I love the guitars in this disc. They just sound really cool. Same goes <br/>with samples, a soft spot. Some of this reminded me of NIN. I have to <br/>listen to it a lot more for it to grow on me totally, but I like the <br/>Remote Control tracks the best so far. The unlisted track is kinda <br/>strange, but nice.<br/><br/>Autovoice - A Living Death<br/>I was not real impressed with some of the vocals on this disc. The <br/>second track has a real loud and obnoxious sound, which would appear to <br/>be a snare drum sound. It reappears on other tracks, such as Fallout. <br/>I'm sorry, but snare drums should not overpower the entire mix like <br/>this, no matter how radical a sound you're trying to go for. I try to <br/>like it, but in the end, it just causes me to skip the remainder of the <br/>track. The distorted-sounding vocals that appear throughout the album <br/>sound too quiet to me. I bought this because someone likened them to <br/>Skinny Puppy. It's maybe more like Skinny Puppy if they had the guy from <br/>Cybershadow or something guest singing, and if they used a rapid-fire <br/>shotgun for a snare drum. If it weren't for the mis-matched sound <br/>levels, I could probably get past the vocals and really get into this <br/>disc, but as it is, it's not real fun to listen to for me.<br/><br/>Feezel - Life Moves On<br/>Described as a "nastier-edged Megadeth," if you've heard this disc, you <br/>could understand my frustration and disappointment with that <br/>description. They're more like a heavy rock band, and not so much metal. <br/>The vocals sound pretty good, and the disc is mostly enjoyable, as long <br/>as you skip over the Church as Usual track. For some reason, I think <br/>that people who like Pillar may like these guys.<br/><br/>[null factor] - Purity<br/>I figured I'd love this disc right from the first moments of the opening <br/>track. I was right. Pretty much every track has a great underlying beat, <br/>great vocals, and overall, it's very danceable music (not that I dance, <br/>heh, nobody wants to see that). The Jagged Doctrine mix of Critical is a <br/>treat that has a very different sound compared to the rest of the disc. <br/>My favorite track so far is the opening cut, but this is becoming a <br/>favorite disc of mine quickly.<br/><br/>Symbiotica<br/>Very relaxing, female vocals on a bed of soft synth sounds with assorted <br/>other sounds and percussion. I like the sound of Wilderness Call, with <br/>that singing and percussive beat the best, but some songs are a bit too <br/>happy-sounding for my tastes. In fact, the entire CD is kinda out of my <br/>range, but if I ever need to fall asleep, and fast, I'll pop this disc <br/>in.<br/><br/>The Way Sect Bloom - Effloresce<br/>I knew of these guys from the Electro Shock Therapy comp, and I'm glad I <br/>finally ordered their disc. The song Washed reminds me highly of Circle <br/>of Dust, and this is no shock, considering Klayton worked on this disc, <br/>and I think this song in particular.<br/><br/>Elder - Plagues, Woes<br/>I bought this, and now, not even a week after it arrived, the price was <br/>cut in half! This just burns me up! I'm outraged! I could've paid only <br/>50 cents for this disc, but no, they ripped me! Oh well, at least it's <br/>almost decent for a grunge band. Some songs feel out of place, like <br/>River, and lyrics like those on Down the Stairs seem kinda silly. Some <br/>of the disc sounds repetitive, but hey, it's grunge. Some songs stand <br/>out, unlike Wish for Eden's Pet the Fish disc, but still, they're few <br/>and far between.<br/><br/><br/>2005-04-12<br/>----------<br/><br/>More CDs came in today.<br/><br/>Sometime Sunday - Drain<br/>Very cool grungy type stuff. Sounds similar to Soundgarden and the like. <br/>I like this album so far.<br/><br/>Wish for Eden - Pet the Fish<br/>This album is comprised of 10 identical tracks. Or at least that was <br/>what I thought... Upon further examination, apparently the songs have <br/>different lyrics.<br/><br/>Fell Venus - @<br/>Some pretty strange singing on this album. I don't really know why I got <br/>rid of the first copy of it that I owned, but some songs can get on your <br/>nerves. Nevermind the weird track numbering.<br/><br/>Mortal - Nu En Jin<br/>This is much better vocals than the previous Mortal albums I've <br/>heard, even though I didn't mind some of their older stuff, in <br/>moderation. This is a great change, and totally different than Wake, <br/>which was kinda sore-thumbish for them.<br/><br/><br/>2005-04-09<br/>----------<br/><br/>Ever<br/>Wow! Amazing stuff here. I got goosebumps listening to some of it... <br/>Also, they sent me two copies of the CD - one of them was signed too. <br/>I'm not sure if the second copy was a mistake or what, so I'm gonna <br/>email them about it.<br/><br/>Virgin Black - Elegant... and Dying<br/>Very nice. I've always loved them since the first time I heard their <br/>stuff, way before AudioGalaxy was turned into a pay service. I own <br/>Sombre Romantic and Trance discs, and now this. All are masterpieces. I <br/>really love listening to their music. I did notice that the track times <br/>listed on the back are sometimes shorter than the tracks on the disc. <br/>That's kinda strange.<br/><br/>Generation - Brutal Reality<br/>Very cool sounding industrial metal hybrid. I like the samples they use, <br/>and the vocals are cool. I am glad I gambled on this one.<br/><br/><br/>2005-04-08<br/>----------<br/><br/>Some CDs are in. Below are the first few reviews.<br/><br/>Global Warning - Enemy Within<br/>A great metal album... The singer has a good sound for his vocals... <br/>Kinda reminds me a bit of Jon from Korn crossed with James from <br/>Metallica, with a touch of Dale from Bride for vocals, coupled with a <br/>cross between Titanic, Virgin Black, Metallica for the music. Others <br/>might compare them to Disturbed or Godsmack or POD, based on what I've <br/>read. Anyhow, great band, they have clips on their site. If you like <br/>metal at all, check out the clips at least.<br/><br/>Judean Radiostatic - Flux<br/>Nice sound. I like the samples used in the first track... Something I <br/>really miss in a lot of the Christian music I listen to. Sometimes the <br/>vocals reminded me of Skinny Puppy and sometimes a bit of Marilyn <br/>Manson. The occasional female vocals are nice too.<br/><br/>dead turns alive - Salvation and Despair<br/>Some more samples, which are great, and some really good tracks. Some of <br/>them I didn't like as much, as they sounded too technoy. My favorite <br/>track is definitely Influence, which you can get a live video of on <br/>their website. I have to listen to it more for it to grow on me, because <br/>a few of the songs were disappointing, but I'm sure that'll change.<br/><br/>Gretchen - In the Mean Time<br/>I was pleasantly surprised that I liked most of the songs on this album, <br/>as I was expecting it to be like No Doubt. The CD has tons of extras <br/>too, such as the entire album pre-ripped to 128Kbps MP3s, wallpapers, <br/>icons, videos, lyrics... Very cool batch of extras, and thankfully it's <br/>not all embedded into a single file... So then I can view it all in <br/>Linux. Anyhow, it's a good female-fronted rock band, and a song or to <br/>reminds me a tiny bit of Evanescence, but more rockish. No piano.<br/><br/>Fatal Blast Whip - Constellation<br/>The soothing sounds of this album put me to sleep. I'll have to listen <br/>to it again. I like the sound of the vocals for sure. Very nice. I'll <br/>give it another listen when I'm more awake.<br/><br/>I love them all so far, but my favorites are Global Warning and <br/>Gretchen. Well... Each album has a few tracks that are awesome... I <br/>guess I just like them all.<br/><br/><br/>2005-03-31<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, I just decided that I'm sick of crappily-named MP3 files. So I did <br/>a quick search of my APT repositories, and I discovered EasyTAG. Wow! I <br/>sure wish I didn't procrastinate in searching for a decent MP3 file <br/>renamer/ID3 tag editor. It's sweet. If you're looking for one, check it <br/>out. No, I'm not with them. I can't hardly code yet.<br/><br/><br/>2005-03-27<br/>----------<br/><br/>I modded an Xbox yesterday and upgraded hard drives in two Xboxes. This <br/>means I had cash to spend. And I decided to buy me a whole new musical <br/>library. Here are the two dozen discs I am expecting in the coming <br/>weeks. I'll try posting a review here of each album as I listen to them, <br/>if I remember.<br/><br/>Autovoice - Living Death<br/>Dead Turns Alive - Salvation and Despair<br/>Elder - Plagues and Woes<br/>Ever<br/>Feezel - Life Moves On<br/>Fell Venus - @<br/>Generation - Brutal Reality<br/>Global Warning - Enemy Within<br/>Grammatrain - Lonely House<br/>Gretchen - In the Mean Time<br/>Jagged Doctrine - Absolution<br/>Judean Radio Static - Flux<br/>Mortal - Nu En Jin<br/>Null Factor - Purity<br/>Oil - Refine<br/>Sometime Sunday - Drain<br/>Symbiotica<br/>Torn Skin - Violence & Technology<br/>Ultimatum - Puppet Of Destruction<br/>Virgin Black - Elegant and Dying<br/>Way Sect Bloom - Effloresce<br/>Wish For Eden - Pet the Fish<br/>Wyrick - Mental Floss<br/>Yonderboy - Mission Of Mercy<br/><br/><br/>2005-03-05<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, so far on this new job I haven't really used Asterisk yet.<br/><br/>I've been learning a lot of stuff about SIP and general telecom. Well, <br/>not so much learning new telecom stuff as remembering stuff from <br/>college. Anyhow, I've been using iptel.org's SER software on Debian, <br/>which is great. Who ever thought that I'd get to set up Linux at this <br/>company, and get paid to do it?<br/><br/>Well, nothing really new. I did put Ubuntu on my laptop and my desktop. <br/>So far I'm impressed with it. It's user-friendly, but not in the same <br/>way that Mandrake et al are. Ubuntu does things nicely, whereas <br/>Mandrake's tools, or whoever else you want to compare to, tend to get in <br/>the way. Moving from Debian to Ubuntu, was it a good change? I can't <br/>tell you that yet, but so far it seems great. I'd like to see this <br/>distro raise to the top of the pack. There are a lot of names working on <br/>it - Jeff Waugh, Daniel Stone, etc. It's impressive so far, anyhow.<br/><br/><br/>2005-01-31<br/>----------<br/><br/>Today marks the beginning of the second week of my new job as a Jr. <br/>Telecom Technician. That's a fancy title for "Asterisk/Linux Research <br/>and Development." This is supposed to last 6 months, but might run <br/>longer/permanently if the company decides to move this into production.<br/><br/><br/>2005-01-12<br/>----------<br/><br/>This Christmas I got money, plus I sold a bunch of old gear. Now I have <br/>spent close to $900-$1000 on music gear. This is insane! Oh yeah, and my <br/>RM1x came in and it was severely beaten.<br/><a href="http://icculus.org/~dolson/rm1x.html">http://icculus.org/~dolson/rm1x.html</a><br/><br/><br/>2004-12-20<br/>----------<br/><br/>Jim Gaffigan is a funny comic. Check him out if you're interested and <br/>haven't heard of him yet. I wouldn't plug his website <br/>(jimgaffigan.com) in my .plan or anything like that, because that's not <br/>me. Besides, I'm sure you could find his website (jimgaffigan.com) on a <br/>search engine if you wanted to go to his website (jimgaffigan.com).<br/><br/><br/>2004-12-09<br/>----------<br/><br/>Darrell Abbott, aka Dimebag Darrell, is dead. It is a sad, sad day.<br/><br/>Just yesterday I was in the mall, holding a Damageplan CD in my hands, <br/>wondering what the ex-Pantera members were up to these days... And then <br/>last night, this happened.<br/><br/>He, along with four others were murdered before a lone police officer <br/>showed up and took down the killer with a shotgun blast to the face.<br/><br/>Darrell was an amazing guitarist. I was glad to see the tributes on <br/>Megadeth.com, Anthrax.com, ZakkWylde.com, and Sepultura.com.br. Very <br/>classy for these musicians to show their respect for this loss.<br/><br/>I sure hope that a rash of copy-cat murders do not break out, but <br/>wouldn't be surprised.<br/><br/><br/>2004-12-08<br/>----------<br/><br/>I just discovered jbidwatcher. Sweet, open-source goodness. For a Java <br/>program, it sure isn't bad. It could be worse.<br/><br/>Hopefully this will help me win a Groovebox for cheap.<br/><br/><br/>2004-12-04<br/>----------<br/><br/>If anyone has any used Grooveboxes, let me know... I'm this -| |- close <br/>to buying one off eBay.<br/><br/><a href="http://icculus.org/~dolson/wishlist">http://icculus.org/~dolson/wishlist</a> (I'll be adding to this soon)<br/><br/><br/>2004-11-17<br/>----------<br/><br/>Holy crap, Megadeth rocked! That is all.<br/><br/><br/>2004-11-11<br/>----------<br/><br/>I am SOOO hooked on getting a Groovebox. If anyone has one or knows a <br/>good cheap place to get one, LET ME KNOW! I'll probably get a Roland <br/>MC-303 to start, but right now I've got a MC-505 on loan for a week... <br/>Trying to not get too stuck to it, but it's gonna be hard.<br/><br/>I didn't get to go to Skinny Puppy yesterday. That sucked. But I'm <br/>counting on them touring again... Here's hoping.<br/><br/>I'm going through all the crap I have and trying to find stuff to sell. <br/>I'll list some things here and on eBay.<br/><br/><br/>2004-10-27<br/>----------<br/><br/>I'm totally against it and offended by it. I'm going out to let my real <br/>talent show, not to just stand there and dance around. Personally, I'd <br/>never lip-synch. It's just not me. -- Ashlee Simpson, Lucky Magazine<br/><br/><br/>2004-10-26<br/>----------<br/><br/>Just bought tickets to Megadeth today. I can't wait to go! Still looking <br/>for a ride to Skinny Puppy too.<br/><br/>I move to a house in 3 days, so this is pretty sweet. We're packing and <br/>stuff, and it's coming along.<br/><br/><br/>2004-10-19<br/>----------<br/><br/>I packed my Xbox away. Moving in two weeks and I haven't touched it <br/>since I got Zelda anyhow.<br/><br/>I got a USB CF card reader today. Read about it here: <br/><a href="http://icculus.org/~dolson/centrioscfreader.html">http://icculus.org/~dolson/centrioscfreader.html</a><br/><br/>Nothing else really new. I'm about to eat my 6th Big Mac of the day.<br/><br/><br/>2004-10-10<br/>----------<br/><br/>A little while back, at the end of September, I got a Gamecube. I didn't <br/>have to pay a dime for it either. I simply traded some old Windows games <br/>for it. Who do you think got the better deal?<br/><br/>I got: Gamecube, cables, controller, MadCatz controller, Super Mario <br/>Sunshine, Memory Card 59, Super Smash Bros. Melee, and Memory Card 16x.<br/><br/>He got: Gettysburg, Populous 3, Starsiege, GTA2, Red Alert, Sanitarium, <br/>Summoner, Nox, Clue (from a cereal box), Fallout, and Aquanox (tossed in <br/>as a freebie as I had two copies anyhow).<br/><br/>The verdict? I think considering I don't run Windows, I got a fantastic <br/>deal. Even if I did run Windows, it's hard to beat this swap.<br/><br/>So now I've forgotten all about Fable and my Xbox in general... I've <br/>been playing Zelda on the 'cube whenever I've had time away from working <br/>on osCommerce and osTickets for my business site that I'm starting up.<br/><br/>If you haven't taken our quick survey, please do.<br/><br/>I'm not very far in Zelda yet. I'm just on my way to Dragon's Roost or <br/>whatever it's called. My wife is playing it right now, and she was stuck <br/>at the three statues, so she asked me to catch up and figure it out, so <br/>I did, then I saved and passed the controller over to her for her to <br/>play. Heh. She didn't realize she could grab the statue and pull it <br/>forward. :)<br/><br/><br/>2004-10-03<br/>----------<br/><br/><a href="http://www.clickycart.com/survey/">http://www.clickycart.com/survey/</a> <-- please do that if you haven't <br/>already. I'm going to start up an online store, and I wanna know what <br/>sorts of things people buy and what they use to pay with. Thanks!<br/><br/>23:54 < mousematt> whats the weather like where u are today?<br/>23:55 < dolson> according to my Gnome applet, it's 9 Celcius and cloudy<br/><br/><br/>2004-09-18<br/>----------<br/><br/>I'm about to try out Fable. I wonder if it'll be good or if it'll <br/>suck...<br/><br/>Well, if it sucks, I can always go listen to the Megadeth album.<br/><br/><br/>2004-09-14<br/>----------<br/><br/>Megadeth's new album rules.<br/><br/><br/>2004-09-12<br/>----------<br/><br/>I just downloaded a video from Megadeth's new album, which was shown on <br/>MTV2, and I was confused... I thought my sound card was dying. Then I <br/>thought that the video was a bad quality TV rip. Then I realized that <br/>MTV bleeps out the words "death" and "high." I could almost, ALMOST, <br/>understand bleeping "high" if the verse referred to drugs, but it <br/>doesn't - the verse is "I can't kick high enough."<br/><br/>This is truly stupid.<br/><br/><br/>2004-08-22<br/>----------<br/>The house is ours.<br/><br/>Someone ported my BattlePong to Xbox! Haha. Here's a link: <br/><a href="http://xhomebrew.netfirms.com/battlepong.shtml">http://xhomebrew.netfirms.com/battlepong.shtml</a> I found out by accident <br/>while checking out an FTP server for a new dashboard. Crazy.<br/><br/><br/>2004-08-20<br/>----------<br/>So today was the inspection for the house we are most likely buying. <br/>Insurance said they would insure the house, our mortgage was approved, <br/>and nothing super major showed up in the inspection report. We'll be <br/>moving in on Nov. 1st, assuming we decide to go ahead and the lawyer <br/>doesn't find any legal issues.<br/><br/>Yesterday the inspector sent over the contract to me in Word .doc <br/>format, and I had asked if he had an alternative format, even a PDF so I <br/>could print it out and he said he didn't. Well, today he came to my <br/>apartment to get his check, and he said "so, you run Linux then?" and <br/>just totally opened himself up for me to lay the smack down. He asked a <br/>couple more questions, and I mentioned that I don't generally worry <br/>about security, viruses, spyware, and so on and explained why. He asked <br/>if it was hard to use, and I asked if he had seen it before. He hadn't. <br/>And now he has... I sat him down in front of my PC and showed him what <br/>his contract looked like in OpenOffice.org, as the formatting is <br/>slightly off. I showed him Evolution. I showed him FireFox and mentioned <br/>that CERT recommended ditching IE for the time being, and that FireFox <br/>works on Windows too. I showed him some different themes for Gnome, and <br/>he seemed impressed. He asked how hard it was to set up. I started <br/>explaining that some hardware might not work, his handheld, printer, and <br/>proprietary software might not work, and so on. I was just being honest <br/>about it. He said "that's alright, I could probably run Linux on my home <br/>network and it'd be fine." So, who knows? Maybe it's the start of <br/>something. :) I just emailed him the links to Gnoppix and Knoppix as he <br/>requested when I mentioned these distros, and I also included a lot of <br/>other info, and offered assistance if he wanted it.<br/><br/>This really does feel like a religion and like I just got someone saved. <br/>It's sorta scary.<br/><br/><br/>2004-07-10<br/>----------<br/>I just had to write a note here about how I am feeling right now... <br/>Megadeth is such a great band. Dave Mustaine is one of the coolest <br/>musicians when it comes to being cool with his fans. He posts on the <br/>Megadeth forums, he releases MP3s occasionally, and everything. If <br/>you're a fan, and you didn't know, he's releasing a new album in <br/>September, called The System Has Failed, and he's also releasing all of <br/>the previous records (except KIMB, since it's done already), remixed and <br/>remastered, with bonus tracks, at the end of this month. I feel pretty <br/>sorry that I didn't like Megadeth instantly upon hearing them, but I was <br/>blind at the time, and thought that Metallica were a superior band. It <br/>isn't so - listen to the musical detail and the vocals. James is a great <br/>singer, but Dave is just better. At least that's my opinion.<br/><br/>Oh, and I recorded a new track too. I'll be releasing it on the RiviR <br/>website soon, once my wife is done recording her vocals, and I give the <br/>song a title.<br/><br/><br/>2004-06-27<br/>----------<br/><br/>So my co-workers and I like gimping each other's faces onto pictures. <br/>Well, now we have a website to allow easy access to these things. Check <br/>it out at www.gimpdesk.tk and leave some comments if you like. Trust me, <br/>the pictures are funnier when you know these guys... So you might not <br/>even wanna bother.<br/><br/>Time to go play Showdown for the first time.<br/><br/><br/>2004-06-22<br/>----------<br/><br/>So I call my ISP (Sympatico) when I get home from work, because their <br/>DNS servers were not working. I couldn't ping even yahoo.ca, but I did <br/>have an IP address on my ppp0. Well, I call them up, and I ask if their <br/>DNS servers are down. Apparently they were not aware of any problems. I <br/>told him that I couldn't ping yahoo.ca, but I was assigned an IP <br/>address, and there is traffic on the ppp interface. He confirmed with <br/>me, "So you can't browse a webpage, right?" I said "right." Because I <br/>couldn't. So he's like "okay, let me pull up the info for Can't Browse a <br/>Website." I tried pinging again, and it started to work. I said "oh, <br/>nevermind, it's working now. But just for reference, can I confirm that <br/>I have the correct DNS IP addresses?" And he says "I can tell you how to <br/>get your email...?? Will that help?"<br/><br/>...<br/><br/>......<br/><br/>"No, it's working. I just want to know if I have the proper DNS <br/>addresses or not," I replied.<br/>"I don't know what you mean," he argued.<br/>"I just need to know the IP address for your DNS servers."<br/>"Okay, just a minute."<br/><br/>Then he puts me on hold for a bit. When he gets back, he says, "okay, <br/>it's 192 dot 168 dot 2 dot 1."<br/>"Really?" I exclaimed, puzzled at how he would guess me internal LAN's <br/>DNS server address, which was incorrect, but oh, so close.<br/>"That's what they tell me," was his reply.<br/><br/>The End.<br/><br/><br/>2004-06-07<br/>----------<br/><br/>So I sit here waiting for the Calgary Flames to get their act together <br/>and win the Stanley Cup. It ain't gonna happen. So close, yet so far <br/>away. I'm used to let-downs. I work on HelpDesk for TeleSpectrum.<br/><br/><br/>2004-06-05<br/>----------<br/><br/>So I sit here waiting for the Calgary Flames to start off this game 6 of <br/>the Stanley Cup final versus the Tampa Bay Lightning. My prediction is <br/>that Calgary will pull it off tonight, but it will be a great game. So <br/>sad for Tampa, but I don't care! I just want Canada to get a Cup again. <br/>It's been many years since we did... And Montreal doesn't count. Don <br/>Cherry rules, and this might be the last time I see him on Hockey Night <br/>in Canada... And he's going out with style - a huge-ass hat with the <br/>Canadian flag on it... C'mon Calgary, do it for our country.<br/><br/>I've been playing Thief: Deadly Shadows lately, and I'm so glad that I <br/>have an Xbox. It's the only real first-person game that I can stand to <br/>play without a keyboard and mouse combo. It's got some subtle <br/>improvements over the older PC-only predecessors that make for a much <br/>smoother game... I love it.<br/><br/>I've been working on Battle Tic Tac Toe again now that I have a laptop. <br/>Progress reports are up on www.scapegoatsoftware.com in the Developer <br/>Journal section (look under Projects).<br/><br/>Still no donations for my plastic surgery...<br/><br/><br/>2004-05-15<br/>----------<br/><br/>I have now watched An Evening With Kevin Smith four times. I just love<br/>it... I don't... know... why.<br/><br/>Also, if you feel like donating money to my Make Dana Look Like Mr. Bean<br/>Fund, I accept PayPal payments at dana@mandrakeusers.org and I'd also<br/>accept cash, check, or money order.<br/><br/><br/>2004-04-08<br/>----------<br/><br/>I may be recording some new material this weekend, inspired by Skinny <br/>Puppy's reformation. Until it is released, check this out:<br/><br/> (18:15:19) rad89: man do you know where i can get the cd key <br/> for microsfot works 7.0<br/> (18:15:29) DOlson: www.openoffice.org<br/><br/>I learned today that the only thing better than my Burger King Whopper <br/>is someone else's.<br/><br/><br/>2004-04-05<br/>----------<br/><br/>New Skinny Puppy album makes me really happy... It opens the doors to <br/>possibilites that I had only dreamed about... I hope they come to <br/>Canada, so I know when to book my vacation.<br/><br/><br/>2004-03-26<br/>----------<br/><br/>Just got off the phone with a cool chick from Nintendo. Here's a tip to <br/>all you foreigners: selling pirated and hacked GameBoy Advance games on <br/>eBay is NOT COOL. You rip me off, you leave me with no choice...<br/><br/><br/>2004-03-17<br/>----------<br/><br/>And back to Debian I go. SmoothWall decided it doesn't want to see my <br/>NICs anymore, and the day before, it decided to turn off my Internet <br/>conenction just because it can. Well, screw that.<br/><br/><br/>2004-03-14<br/>----------<br/><br/>So the power went out for an hour and a half in a good portion of the <br/>city today, killing my 212-day uptime... So I tried out a SmoothWall <br/>install, and it's working well, except the IP spoof protection... I'll <br/>have to set up a DMZ. It's all good.<br/><br/><br/>2004-03-09<br/>----------<br/><br/>I decided I will write Unreal 3 in VBscript. Transgaming will probably <br/>get the vbscript.exe stuff working great in Linux by the time I'm done.<br/><br/><br/>2004-02-23<br/>----------<br/><br/>I don't know why I am admitting this, but I really love That 70s Show...<br/><br/><br/>2004-01-11<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, I have accepted a position on XboxAddict.com as an <br/>interviewer/reviewer/previewer. I'm working on my first review, which <br/>will be of The Hobbit. A game that nobody liked except for me... I will <br/>get free games once my trial membership is over, so that's good - the <br/>less stuff I gotta pay for, the better. It's fun doing reviews and <br/>interviews, and if I can get free games or free previews of games, all <br/>the better.<br/><br/>In other news, I did actually complete The Hobbit, and this weekend I <br/>played through Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance again, in preparation for <br/>the sequel's release later this month.<br/><br/><br/>2004-01-02<br/>----------<br/><br/>There's always something good goin' down at Mr. Sub.<br/><br/><br/>2003-12-28<br/>----------<br/><br/>So I got some money for Christmas, and bought a nice 27" Sanyo TV with <br/>S-Video and component inputs, as well as the standard composite inputs. <br/>I also got a high-definition pack for the Xbox, so now I need an optical <br/>audio receiver!! :) Been mostly watching movies lately, such as LOTR and <br/>stuff. Picked up Jurrasic Park for $4.66 at Wal-Mart too. Oh yeah, my TV <br/>was regular $379, but we got $100 off on Boxing Day... Gotta love that <br/>Boxing Day. :)<br/><br/>Maybe next year I'll buy a real bed!<br/><br/><br/>2003-11-23<br/>----------<br/><br/>Perogies + Deep Fryer = Dynamite Idea.<br/><br/>Try it!<br/><br/>Oh, and onion rings are Hard To Make. At least the recipe I tried didn't <br/>work out well at all...<br/><br/><br/>2003-11-13<br/>----------<br/><br/>Just when I get Star Choice hooked up and working, something has to rip <br/>my attention away from it... I figured that would happen.<br/><br/>I got The Hobbit for Xbox today, as an early Christmas gift... I only <br/>got it new because that way I got the free copy of The Hobbit novel too, <br/>for preordering. Well, this game is quite good. It's cartoony, not as <br/>bad as Zelda: The Wind Wanker or that new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles <br/>game, but certainly not realistic. It doesn't matter. It's still good. <br/>Some elements in it remind me a LOT of The Simpsons Hit & Run game, such <br/>as the picking up of the coins and whatnot without necessarily touching <br/>them. That's a nice feature, IMHO. So far, I haven't gotten far in the <br/>game, as I wanna take my time. I have until January to play this, at <br/>which point I will (hopefully) have a new game to play - Baldur's Gate: <br/>Dark Alliance 2. But until then, playing as Biblo will likely take up a <br/>lot of what little free time I have these days.<br/><br/>My new-ish job is going well. I'm taking calls all day long, I'm <br/>learning new things, getting more comfortable. On top of that, today was <br/>pizza day - the head of IT, who happens to work just feet away from our <br/>division (as opposed to in a different country with some of the other <br/>divisions) whipped out a credit card (the company's card, I hope) and <br/>ordered 7 pizzas, like 24 cans of pop, plates, napkins, dipping sauce... <br/>It was good. I wish I could have eaten more though. I should have <br/>brought a couple slices home, except that I had my mind on other things <br/>when I was walking out the door... Namely, The Hobbit.<br/><br/><br/>2003-10-31<br/>----------<br/><br/>"Now Fox has a new rule that we can't do those little fake news crawls <br/>on the bottom of the screen in a cartoon because it might confuse the <br/>viewers into thinking it's real news."<br/> -- Matt Groening<br/><br/>Uhh... The Simpsons is a CARTOON. Fox doesn't think much of their <br/>viewers, if they think that we will confuse a cartoon with an actual <br/>news feed...<br/><br/>Oh yeah, so I ordered Star Choice (satellite TV) yesterday... Yay.<br/><br/><br/>2003-10-28<br/>----------<br/><br/>"WOW THAT WAS FAST SHIPPING! ATTTTTTTTTTTTT"<br/> -- Feedback left on eBay<br/><br/>My question is: are Ts better than pluses?<br/><br/><br/>2003-10-26<br/>----------<br/><br/>"See, you people say you have enough consoles, and a powerful PC, but <br/>whenever a new console comes out, you people always buy it."<br/> -- Robert Shambro, Infinium Labs<br/><br/>That is all.<br/><br/><br/>2003-10-18<br/>----------<br/><br/>Okay, so I went and got my CPIC for job #2 today, and my interview is <br/>scheduled for Monday... I go to work today, and find out that job #1 <br/>decides that they want me (yay! I got the position I wanted) so now I <br/>have a useless CPIC that cost me $10 but I had to get it else Murphy <br/>would have laid the smack down on me and cost me both job #1 and job #2, <br/>and then job #3 likely wouldn't have panned out either because I haven't <br/>called them back in over a week... But, since I have job #1, that means <br/>I get to start Monday and make a salary, and I don't have to telemarket <br/>anymore! I'm working in my field as a help desk technician, with options <br/>for future specialization in different areas such as NT admin and so <br/>forth. I'll update you all sometime to let you know how I like it.<br/>:D <-- that's me!<br/><br/><br/>2003-10-14<br/>----------<br/><br/>So last night a friend of mine who works for a hosting company convinced <br/>me to register a domain. So, www.scapegoatsoftware.com is now online. :)<br/><br/>I gotta go get my CPIC done soon, else I can't get that other job.<br/><br/><br/>2003-10-11<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, it's been a while since I've updated this thing. Still waiting to <br/>hear about that Help Desk job. I have another interview for a Business <br/>Desk Analyst on the 20th, and I think I'm going to take it, even though <br/>it's only part-time, because it's more in-line with my field than <br/>telefrickinmarketing...<br/><br/>Anyhow, onto the good stuff...<br/><br/>Scapegoat Software is now working on Battle Tic Tac Toe. I'm the <br/>programmer (*ack* *cough* *hack*), and all the graphics are pretty much <br/>ready. Emmett is set to do the sound track, and if we think we can sell <br/>16 copies+ of this game, then we're probably gonna go for it... This way <br/>we can pay Emmett and start making a bit of cash. But we aren't entirely <br/>sure yet. Anyhow, information, developer journal, screenshots, etc are <br/>all up on our site: <a href="http://sgoats.cjb.net/">http://sgoats.cjb.net/</a><br/><br/>If you'd be interested in purchasing this game for $10 (download) or $15 <br/>(on CD, shipped to your home), then please PLEASE let me know. You can <br/>email me at dolson@icculus.org, and that way we can judge if this game <br/>should go commercial or not. Thanks in advance.<br/><br/><br/>2003-09-21<br/>----------<br/><br/>I had an interview for Help Desk Technician, and it went well. I want <br/>that job. Or any job. As long as I can stop telemarketing. Bring it on, <br/>I'm ready. I can take it. PLEASE!<br/><br/>So, here's my Linux-related prediction: Transgaming will stop supporting <br/>Linux and switch business plans to become competition for MacSoft... <br/>Yeah, that's my prediction. So, if it happens, remember, you heard it <br/>here first. :)<br/><br/><br/>2003-09-13<br/>----------<br/><br/>< me> Hi, this is Dana Olson calling on behalf of SBC, how are you <br/>today?<br/>< dude> Hi, I'm on that Do Not Call list.<br/>< me> You're on our Do Not Call list?<br/>< dude> No, I'm on the National Do Not Call list.<br/>< me> Oh, the one that takes effect on October 1st.<br/>< dude> ...<br/>< me> ... It's September right now...<br/>< dude> ...<br/>< me> So we are allowed to call you until October...<br/>< dude> ... Okay, send me the info in the mail.<br/>< me> I will do that, and you have a great night. Thanks for speaking <br/>with SBC.<br/><br/>Yes, that conversation actually took place tonight. I just thought I'd <br/>share, even if no one sees any humor value in it. :)<br/><br/>Anyhow, I've got an interview for an inbound call center on Tuesday. If <br/>I'm offered the position there, I'm about 99% sure that I'm going to <br/>take it. The pay is better, and I can finally get out of calling people <br/>during their dinner. And just in time for the National Do Not Call list <br/>to take effect. :)<br/><br/>Today I had an information session at a consulting firm, and I all but <br/>have the position for supply business desk analyst... I'd be doing <br/>password resets mostly to start, and that's FINE by me. I hope that I <br/>can work it all out around my schedule, whatever it will be then, so <br/>that I can do it on the side (it's a supply position, so no guaranteed <br/>hours at all) of a regular job for a while. I think I have some <br/>decisions to make soon. It's exciting, while unsettling at the same <br/>time, since I don't want to alienate any of my opportunities... <br/>Decisions, decisions...<br/><br/><br/>2003-09-10<br/>----------<br/><br/>07:16 < LordHavoc> I just love knowledge, I try to absorb everything<br/>07:17 <+sibn> knowledge is kind of a pain in the ass to maintain, though.<br/>07:17 <+warthawg> I have some catlitter like that<br/><br/>Heh. Joe Barr has his moments (none of which appear on LinuxWorld.com).<br/><br/>In other news, I had a test at a different call center, and they know <br/>that I want a tech position. Hopefully something comes of that. Also, I <br/>have an information session at a consulting company, the one that I <br/>really wanted to work at when I first moved here, and they are hiring <br/>someone for part-time. Hopefully they want me. Also, my current place of <br/>employment is hiring a help desk technician, but unfortunately, they <br/>require a driver's license and a vehicle, which I don't have/can't <br/>afford. Well, here's hoping they don't care so much about that.<br/><br/><br/>2003-08-25<br/>----------<br/><br/>God, do I hate my job. Not only does the job suck, but the company <br/>decided that my Monday off will now become a MANDATORY work day. To top <br/>that off, I was in the top 18 in my group, so I gotta go in at 2PM and <br/>stay until 10PM. I signed up to work from 5PM to 12AM. This is a rip, I <br/>want my money back-- erm... Fooey. Someone hook me up with a better job.<br/><br/>I was playing Morrowind a bit today too. I'm not very far into the game, <br/>even though it's the only Xbox game I own, but yeah, I do plan on <br/>finishing it someday, if such a thing is possible... I haven't finished <br/>a game since... Oh gee, what was it... Return to Krondor, I think. Boy, <br/>that was a great game... I would love a third one in that series, as <br/>long as it was like RTK, and not like the first one. Oh, and as long as <br/>it was on Linux or Xbox.<br/><br/><br/>2003-08-18<br/>----------<br/><br/>So it's been one year since I deleted my Windows 98 partition. Yay me.<br/><br/>I'm trying to get time to record more music, but until then, there will <br/>be two songs on my mp3.com page, once the second one gets approved.<br/><br/>Time to get ready for work. And I thought today was going well...<br/><br/><br/>2003-08-12<br/>----------<br/><br/>03:07 <+Mongoose> it's pretty damn sad I've read more stories in <br/>morrowind than r/l<br/><br/>So, my weekend was alright. Other than my wife getting glass in her <br/>foot, and thereby we were forced to buy crutches. Geez.<br/><br/>Anyhow, I finally finished recording "Again" and most of "So Perfect" <br/>which will be on my album "hopefear" someday... Someday soon.<br/><br/><br/>2003-08-06<br/>----------<br/><br/>23:51 < lgp-michael|svrm> coool a cat just wandered into the house<br/>23:51 <+dolson> < lgp-michael|svrm> mmm.. I can eat today<br/><br/>23:59 < floam> i can see lgp-michael|svrm sitting in the living room <br/>dressing up his linux games and having them talk to each other<br/>00:00 < lgp-michael|svrm> I cant dress them up, I cant afford to, they <br/>have imaginary clothes<br/><br/>MUST... PLAY... MOHAA... BUT... CAN'T...<br/><br/><br/>2003-08-03<br/>----------<br/><br/>Okay, here are some tips for you irritable Americans:<br/><br/>- When a Telemarketer calls your home, they are not doing so to be <br/>assholes about it.<br/>- If you don't want the service at the present time, and this is what <br/>you tell them, they WILL call you back.<br/>- Chances are good that these Telemarketers are people like me: <br/>desperate to make money to pay bills and rent. These people are not <br/>trying to upset you, but rather they are trying to do their job.<br/>- They most likely work for a call center, which is contracted to call <br/>on behalf of other companies... You probably don't get the relevance of <br/>this fact, but I will get to this...<br/>- If you don't want to be bothered anymore, ask NICELY to be put onto <br/>the DO NOT CALL list. Here is an example of how you would do so: in a <br/>nice voice, say "Can you put me on your do not call list?" and the <br/>Telemarketer will gladly oblige. This is required by law. If another <br/>Telemarketer calls you, it MIGHT NOT BE FROM THE SAME COMPANY! So there <br/>is no sense getting all pissed off at them. Also, it usually takes about <br/>4 to 6 weeks to have your name fully removed from any given company's <br/>calling lists.<br/>- If you don't want any more calls from a given telemarketing firm, ASK <br/>the Telemarketer on the phone what company they are employed by. Many <br/>times, the Telemarketer will give you a different name than the company <br/>they are representing, because that's just how this business works. Tell <br/>them to put your name on THEIR do not call list, and then you won't get <br/>any calls from that firm for a full five years, as required by law.<br/>- The trick is to be nice about it, and MAKE SURE that they do take you <br/>off the list. Don't hang up until you have your name off the list. <br/>- Do NOT lie to Telemarketers. They do not hold anything personally <br/>against you. There is no need to lie to them. If you don't want to be <br/>bothered, you know what your options are, so DO NOT TELL THEM TO CALL <br/>BACK AT A LATER TIME.<br/>- Telemarketers call people randomly, from lists given by the company <br/>they represent. Just because you don't like the service or product <br/>being offered, doesn't mean that the next call won't become a sale. If <br/>you aren't interested, don't waste the Telemarketer's time and your <br/>time, just put your name on the DO NOT CALL list, and be done with it.<br/>- Don't say you are not interested before you have heard what the offer <br/>is. I could call someone randomly one day, offering $1 Million dollars <br/>FOR FREE, and probably 9 out of 10 Americans would hang up on me before <br/>I even told them what I was offering them. The point is, YOU CAN'T KNOW <br/>IF YOU ARE INTERESTED OR NOT UNTIL YOU'VE HEAR WHAT WE'RE OFFERING. <br/>TARD.<br/>- Last, but not least, NEVER ask for a a Telemarketer's HOME phone <br/>number. Honestly, you just look like a moron when you do. Do you really <br/>think that a Telemarketer has access to the internal systems required to <br/>set you up with whatever service they are offering from whatever company <br/>they are representing FROM THEIR OWN HOME? No, this would be a very <br/>suspicious thing, allowing people to work from home like that... In a <br/>professional company, the Telemarketers should be required to fully <br/>comply with the full security measures and confidentiality <br/>regulations... By asking for a Telemarketer's home phone number, you <br/>appear as someone who hasn't got a clue how a reputable business should <br/>be run, and you obviously thought you were being a smart ass, when you <br/>really were just a dumb ass.<br/><br/><br/>2003-07-27<br/>----------<br/><br/>So I turned 22 yesterday. Yay and all that. We ordered pizza and watched <br/>a couple movies. It was good. My dad even called me twice.<br/><br/>I've been working on a song a bit, trying to rekindle my love of <br/>creating music, but I'm struggling. I've been out of it for too long.<br/><br/>I'm working now, doing telemarketing. Not sure how long I'll be doing <br/>this stuff, because of many reasons... I could get fired, I might not be <br/>able to cope with the stress, I might get a job in my field... But at <br/>least it's money in the meantime.<br/><br/>My wife thinks it's amusing, but I seem to remember everyone's eye <br/>color... Well, not everyone, but almost everyone. I guess it is kinda <br/>weird.<br/><br/>Anyhow, I'm going back to write some lyrics and work on song structure <br/>now. Until next time...<br/><br/><br/>2003-07-18<br/>----------<br/><br/>I don't know what to do now. I could work in telemarketing, and possibly <br/>go mad in the process, or I could continue on my job search... I really <br/>want to work for Sony, but as my luck goes, I won't be chosen for that <br/>job. I need money soon. If I don't take the telemarketing job, I could <br/>never get one there again. I don't agree with telemarketing, and I can't <br/>see myself actually being able to do what they want you to do there. I <br/>just don't know what to do, what to say, or what to think... I'd be <br/>stupid to pass up a job, but what is the point of taking on a job that <br/>you are 99% sure you can't handle?<br/><br/>I have to make a decision soon. Decisions suck. Life sucks.<br/><br/><br/>2003-07-17<br/>----------<br/><br/>Watching movies has become my new hobby. And from that, I have the new <br/>hobby webpage, DOlson's Magical Fantastical Movie Reviews! Check it out<br/>at <a href="http://aslan.no-ip.com/">http://aslan.no-ip.com/</a><br/><br/>So my 22nd birthday is rapidly approaching, only nine days away, and<br/>I'm really hoping to be employed by then so we can go out for dinner. My <br/>wife had an interview today, as did I, and I have to go back tomorrow <br/>for a test and some paid training. Not sure when I'll know if I'm hired <br/>on there, but it's telemarketing... Something I'm not sure I could deal <br/>with for very long. I have my second interview at the Sony store on <br/>Sunday, and boy, do I hope that works out. I'd really love to work <br/>there.<br/><br/>00:10 < dolson> oh how I wish I was young again.<br/>00:10 < dolson> I bet you feel the same<br/>00:10 <@msphil> Can't remember what it was like.<br/><br/><br/>2003-07-07<br/>----------<br/><br/>I just discovered that two guys I used to jam with are living in the <br/>same city as me. That's pretty cool, considering one of them works where <br/>I've been applying. I'm going to contact the other guy tomorrow <br/>probably, and see what he's been up to. He's in a cool band now called <br/>Pinkslip, and they sound really cool. I hope I get to meet up with them <br/>again and jam a bit. Who knows, perhaps I'll get into a band myself <br/>again.<br/><br/><br/>2003-06-24<br/>----------<br/><br/>Home after another weekend visiting family... And getting an Xbox. I got a <br/>used one for about $100 cheaper than getting it new. Also, any games I get <br/>will be pre-owned as well, and this way, none of the stuff I buy will <br/>count as sales for Microsoft and co. And that's advice straight from the <br/>CEO of some Linux game publishing company too. It also saves money, since <br/>new games are bloody expensive.<br/><br/>I sold my copy of Win98SE along with some hardware, including a 15GB hard <br/>drive, a CD-ROM drive, and a USB graphics tablet, in order to pay for the <br/>Xbox... I got the DVD remote and an extra controller (both model S) with <br/>it, so it was a really good deal.<br/><br/>I've watched a few episodes of Family Guy on it, and life is good. I <br/>opened it up last night and put in a 30GB drive, and it was easy to set up <br/>and all that... The old 8GB is now in my PC, as secondary master, for <br/>backing up my documents and stuff. I still have my 80GB drive for my Linux <br/>(with 40GB partitioned for /usr/local/games).<br/><br/>My wife likes to play the old Super Mario games too, so it's actually won <br/>her favor, I think. And she seemed to like the looks of a few games at EB, <br/>such as Morrowind and stuff...<br/><br/>Interesting that, moreso than any other group of Windows users I can think <br/>of, Xbox users seem to be open to the idea of trying Linux. One guy on <br/>EFnet decided to give Debian a shot after I told him a little bit about <br/>apt-get... Every day or two he'll message me with questions, and I answer <br/>them to the best of my ability. He's not the only one, either. It seems to <br/>me that a lot of Xbox users are semi-literate when it comes to Linux. <br/>Maybe I'm dreaming, and perhaps that is the case in any IRC channel, but I <br/>don't remember it being like that before.<br/><br/>Anyhow.<br/><br/>Apologies to those of you who may have read this and hate me now.<br/><br/>In better news, job prospects at EB are looking fairly good, and if I get <br/>in, I'll see about getting some Linux games onto our shelves... Not sure <br/>how realistic that idea is, but hey, I can always try. I went in there <br/>today and was pimping Linux, Ryan, LGP, id, and so forth to the guy in <br/>there... He seemed impressed at the number of OSes that I've tried, and he <br/>himself seemed to have a bit of knowledge of Linux, BeOS, and FreeBSD <br/>even, so I may have been preaching to the choir...<br/><br/>My wife gets interviewed for a management position at some store later <br/>this week, so here's hoping that goes well... I applied to RadioShack and <br/>The Sony Store, and hoping that one of them (preferrably the later) will <br/>call me if EB doesn't do it first.<br/><br/>More job hunting to do tomorrow... Fun stuff.<br/><br/><br/>2003-06-11<br/>----------<br/><br/>Okay, so the trolls cleared out, yadda yadda.<br/><br/>Let me say, Metallica have proven to me that they do care about their<br/>fans more than people give them credit for. Their new album is MUCH<br/>better than their last two, comes with a free DVD, a cool case, and an<br/>access code to their file sharing site, Metallica Vault. Right now there<br/>are about 49 free songs to download, all of live concerts, and they will<br/>add more soon, and possibly even videos and stuff. This new album was<br/>well worth the $19.99 CAD I paid, and friends of mine paid only $12.99<br/>at Best Buy (wish we had one here).<br/><br/>I'm thinking of getting an Xbox as soon as I can afford it. Before you<br/>jump down my throat, realize that I don't really care as to why you think<br/>I shouldn't get one. I know the reasons why I shouldn't get one, as far<br/>as the rest of the world is concerned, but honestly, for the same price<br/>as a PS2, I don't think there is any better deal than an Xbox. I want<br/>it for playing NES, SNES, TG-16, Game Boy, and PSone games all with one<br/>box, one controller, and one power button. On top of that, and perhaps <br/>more importantly, I want it for media - DVD and DivX playback, coupled <br/>with Dolby Digital 5.1 support, I don't think there is any reason NOT to <br/>get an Xbox. Sure, tell me to go buy a PC or whatever. Just because you <br/>can't admit that Microsoft did something right for a change, doesn't mean <br/>I'm going to listen to you. There, I've said my peace.<br/><br/>So now I'm sharing a *gasp* Debian PC with my wife (she hates everything<br/>but Mandrake) because her motherboard decided to quit functioning. Just <br/>what we needed in the middle of a job search... Luckily, setting up her <br/>printer in Debian was easier than I thought (thanks ashridah for the <br/>inital help with CUPS). Our answering machine died with a message on it,<br/>then ressurrected itself a day later, but the message was gone. I *really*<br/>hope that wasn't a job offer...<br/><br/>Oh yeah, Gnome is getting better as the days go by, including Nautilus'<br/>script folder. Mmm... So nice, so nice...<br/><br/><br/>2003-05-22<br/>----------<br/><br/>I've decided I don't really like hanging out in the icculus.org channel<br/>anymore. Over the past week it has degerated into a troll breeding<br/>ground, and it's really just annoying as hell being in there.<br/><br/>Sure, some got kickbanned, but some are sitting on the borderline, not<br/>doing enough to get kicked, but enough to annoy the shit out of you.<br/><br/>Perhaps someday I'll check back in and see what's up. I don't know.<br/><br/><br/>2003-05-10<br/>----------<br/><br/>Decisions, decisions! Should I order a mod chip? Should I risk killing<br/>my over-the-counter-replacement warranty? Where should I order from<br/>that will ship to Canada quickly? Grr...<br/><br/>Oh yeah, I'm still looking for a job.<br/><br/><br/>2003-05-07<br/>----------<br/><br/>Ok. All settled here in North Bay now, and on the hunt for a job. If<br/>you want to hire me, email me. :)<br/><br/>Anyhow, this place is infinitely larger than my old apartment, and the<br/>air is clean and nice... The turtles needed a larger aquarium, so we got<br/>one that is three feet long... That oughtta do it for now.<br/><br/>So I wiped FreeBSD and put Gentoo on top of where it was... After 7<br/>hours of compiling everything, I had X and that's about it. Then it took<br/>a long LONG time to compile some things that I usually use all the time,<br/>such as Evolution, XChat, Gimp, Gaim, Quanta, and so on. And to top it<br/>all off, it's not even faster than Debian! Sure, bootup is a lot faster,<br/>and the fact that it compiles everything is cool, but uh, it takes way<br/>too long to maintain it, and OpenBox takes longer to start up than in<br/>Debian... And if you use OpenBox, you know that it *should* be hard to<br/>notice a difference in OpenBox's startup time. I guess it's a combination<br/>of X and OpenBox... In any case, I don't think I'll be switching to<br/>Gentoo at this point in time... But I haven't used it enough yet to make<br/>that decision. Stay tuned to my adventures. :)<br/><br/>Anyhow, yeah, did I mention I'm looking for work?<br/><br/><br/>2003-04-29<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, tomorrow is my last day in Toronto. Our new apartment is much<br/>larger, and I can't wait to get there. I hope my internet connection<br/>comes back online quickly once I'm there.<br/><br/>Also, today I invented a new recipe:<br/><br/>Beefy Cheese Fries<br/><br/>Cook up one pound of ground beef in a frying pan.<br/>Put a half a bag of fries in the oven to bake at about 450.<br/>Drain the beef and put it on top of the fries when they are ready.<br/>Grate a half-block of marble cheese, and load it on top while the fries<br/>and beef are still hot.<br/>Yummy!<br/><br/>Makes one serving.<br/><br/><br/>2003-04-20<br/>----------<br/><br/>I wrote an article for LinuxHardware.org about Linux gaming. They<br/>would like me to write more, so hopefully I will get to do some reviews<br/>of some cool hardware.<br/><br/><br/>2003-03-26<br/>----------<br/><br/>Okay, so some new stuff is going down with me.<br/><br/>Firstly, I got my preliminary marks back from my final semester of<br/>college, and although they aren't so hot, I didn't fail any of my<br/>classes, so I have no rewrites!! w00t. This means that shortly, I<br/>shall have a second college diploma:<br/> * Computer Network Engineering Technician<br/> * Computer Network Engineering Technologist<br/>That's a lot of good news.<br/><br/>Next, BioWare finally released a beta of Neverwinter Nights! It<br/>runs pretty well on my Debian system, and I've filed 4 bug reports<br/>so far. On my wife's Mandrake system, it was running fine. This<br/>brings me to the third update:<br/><br/>Mandrake released version 9.1 of their distro. I'm sick of hearing<br/>all the "boycott teh french! boycott teh Manbrake Lunix!!11" crap<br/>on Slashdot and other various places... Mandrake 9.1 is easily<br/>the best distro there is right now. Unless you like multiple-hour<br/>installation processes (in which case, I recommend Debian or<br/>Slackware), give Mandrake a shot. The speed amazed me, and as much<br/>as it is tempting me to install it, I just love apt too much. I<br/>can't ditch Debian, as it is easy to upgrade - the only thing<br/>that Mandrake really lacks. I started to go through the 9.0 -> 9.1<br/>upgrade process, but I hit reset halfway through. It just felt too<br/>much like I was wasting my time.<br/><br/>Now, if Mandrake 9.1 would just co-operate with ravage's installer,<br/>or
.plan update from dolson, 2006-12-07 15:13:17
https://icculus.org/finger/dolson?date=2006-12-07&time=15-13-17
Thu, 7 Dec 2006 15:13:17 -0500
--------------------Chunky-Kibbles-Measure-Line-------------------------<br/><br/>Current Projects and Websites<br/>-----------------------------<br/>> <a href="http://www.rivironline.com/">http://www.rivironline.com/</a> (This is music I create myself as RIVIR)<br/>> <a href="http://www.ubuntustudio.com/">http://www.ubuntustudio.com/</a> (This is my wiki for Ubuntu musicians)<br/>> <a href="http://icculus.org/~dolson/wishlist">http://icculus.org/~dolson/wishlist</a> (my wishlist)<br/>> <a href="http://www.scapegoatsoftware.com/">http://www.scapegoatsoftware.com/</a> (This is my programming site)<br/>> <a href="http://gimpdesk.tk/">http://gimpdesk.tk/</a> (This is gimps by me and my ex-co-workers)<br/>> <a href="http://aslan.homelinux.com/dana/movies/">http://aslan.homelinux.com/dana/movies/</a> (My mini movie review site)<br/><br/><br/>2006-12-07<br/>----------<br/><br/>I figured I should put an update here for all zero of my faithful readers.<br/><br/>Well, I am going back to Debian. I don't agree with Mark's actions on the<br/>OpenSUSE mailing list, and the entire thing was a bit of a wake-up call in the<br/>first place. Mark is funding Ubuntu, and if he pulled out at any time, then<br/>where would the distro be? It could carry on, but not nearly in the same<br/>manner as it is now. At least that's my thoughts.. Adding proprietary things<br/>such as the NVIDIA drivers by default is a compromise on free as in speech<br/>freedom, and I think it is not a great plan. Anyhow, maybe I am over-reacting<br/>but I don't really care. Nobody cares who uses what distro anymore, that's so<br/>three years ago.<br/><br/>The Wii is amazingly fun. I love first-person shooters again! Call of Duty 3<br/>is fun to play, and actually, any game is. If you don't have a Wii yet, and<br/>you can afford about $250 US for a new gaming experience, pick one up. I have<br/>not had this much excitement and fun playing games since the SNES. Thanks to<br/>Nintendo and their ideas of shaking up the gaming industry rather than merely<br/>progressing technologically, gaming is fun again.<br/><br/>I do not work for Nintendo. I don't get any reward if you buy a Wii.<br/><br/><br/>2006-09-19<br/>----------<br/><br/>Three months and no update... So much has happened.<br/><br/>Firstly, I don't know what the deal with lilo and diablo-d3 was, and I<br/>don't care. lilo is gone, and that is shitty. My condolences to his<br/>family.<br/><br/>Next up, the Wii has me very excited. I hope to get one at launch.<br/><br/>Also, I have been learning a lot about how to do music with Linux.<br/>This is fun and exciting in it's own right. I will be re-doing all<br/>of my songs in software now, and it's gonna be interesting, if<br/>tedious.<br/><br/>Finally, October will see me travelling to my old city of Toronto to<br/>check out Iron freakin' Maiden! It's been a long time coming. I am<br/>so glad I didn't buy Alice Cooper tickets, even though he's in my city<br/>next month. This is a much better opportunity because although I love<br/>and respect Alice, Iron Maiden has been a much larger influence on me,<br/>musically, and they put on an amazing show, by all accounts. I can't<br/>wait, and my wife is even more stoked than I am.<br/><br/><br/>2006-06-19<br/>----------<br/><br/>There's no such thing as hockey...<br/>There's no such thing as hockey...<br/>There's no such thing as hockey...<br/><br/><br/>2006-06-05<br/>----------<br/><br/>And so it begins.<br/><br/>I really hope that Edmonton can get done what no other Canadian team has <br/>done in recent decades... Take home the Stanley Cup to where it belongs! <br/>Canada. I expect to be disappointed, but there is always hope.<br/><br/><br/>2006-05-26<br/>----------<br/><br/>Now that Google has "ported" Picasa to Linux, I guess everyone can stop <br/>saying that Wine doesn't ruin chances for native ports. It is true <br/>that companies would rather use Wine than put any effort into properly <br/>supporting Linux long-term. Hell, Google didn't even use Winelib, they <br/>used Wine itself! Sure, they contributed some code back to Wine, which <br/>only helps advance Wine. If this keeps happening, it just makes me <br/>wonder why even bother running Linux instead of Windows? Thank <br/>God for F-Spot and other open-source software. Thank God.<br/><br/>F-Spot doesn't look like ass either, like the Win32 app that Picasa is.<br/><br/><br/>2006-05-14<br/>----------<br/><br/>For once, I will do what Sony and Microsoft want me to do. And that is <br/>NOT to buy their products, but instead to buy Nintendo's product.<br/><br/><a href="http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2006-05-11T132519Z_01_N10243836_RTRUKOC_0_US-EXPO-MICROSOFT.xml">http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2006-05-11T132519Z_01_N10243836_RTRUKOC_0_US-EXPO-MICROSOFT.xml</a><br/><a href="http://www.thewiire.com/news/312/1/Sony_Executive_Recommends_Wii_As_Second_Console">http://www.thewiire.com/news/312/1/Sony_Executive_Recommends_Wii_As_Second_Console</a><br/><br/>Hey, if I can't decide which console to buy, I'll just look at what all <br/>three companies are saying to decide.<br/><br/><Microsot> Buy the Wii! It's cool!<br/><Sony> We recommend you get a Wii!<br/><Nintendo> What they said!<br/><Me> Wii it is!<br/><br/><br/>2006-05-09<br/>----------<br/><br/>$500 for a lite PS3? WTF are they smoking? I know for sure now that I <br/>won't be getting one for a long, long time.<br/><br/>Let's hope Nintendo's conference reports the launch date and price, and <br/>that the price is low... $200 or under would have me in the lineups on <br/>release day.<br/><br/><br/>2006-05-05<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, I just finished my first full work week in my new position as a <br/>Perl programmer. After five days, I went from knowing nothing about Perl <br/>outside of what it does, to being able to code some applications, use <br/>modules, read and write to PostgreSQL databases (which I have also never <br/>previously dealt with), and send email. I learned a lot of it on my own <br/>by reading and experimenting, but a large credit goes to the simple, <br/>to-the-point help that I have been given by my fellow programmer who <br/>sits a few feet away from me. I'm well on the road to becoming a real <br/>Perl programmer.<br/><br/>And let me just say that I have been blessed with an awesome work place, <br/>awesome co-workers, and an awesome company. My friends who have moved on <br/>from our last place of employment also claim their new companies are <br/>great, so I am thinking that my previous employer was the exception <br/>rather than the rule, when it comes to employee treatment, business <br/>practices, and employee hiring standards.<br/><br/>There is a cut in pay compared to my last position of around $8600, <br/>which sucks, but I am much happier here, I am not tethered to a <br/>company-issued cell phone, forced to be on-call 24/7, I am not in shift <br/>work, I don't work weekends, etc. I can bring my bike right into the <br/>office and put it into the back room during the day, and the ride there <br/>is only about 10 minutes, 15 if I pedal very leisurely.<br/><br/>A brand new 64-bit system is sitting at my desk - oh yes, it's a desk, <br/>not a cubicle - with an LCD monitor. On top of that, today a co-worker <br/>any I took a trip to Staples and picked out a nice keyboard with more <br/>features than I needed, and a new pointing device - a Logitech optical <br/>trackball, because I prefer to not use mice, as they tend to be too <br/>small for my hands and my pinky and ring fingers cramp.<br/><br/>This morning I got to work, and there was a large Tim Horton's coffee <br/>sitting on my desk, with my name on it. That sort of thing just didn't <br/>happen before, but here this is an almost daily phenomenon - and there <br/>is a stack of paper coffee cup trays in the corner of the room that <br/>reaches the ceiling to prove it.<br/><br/>To top it off, I was informed that at the end of every month, the <br/>company buys pizza for us. So that is awesome, as pizza is my favorite <br/>food. My last place did buy us pizza occasionally, but once they were <br/>bought by that company in Pakistan, those rare occasions seemed to have <br/>stopped. For us in Canada, anyhow.<br/><br/>This new place I am working at is everything that I'm about. They do <br/>webhosting, they are an ISP, a CLEC, they do VoIP with Asterisk, and a <br/>big portion of it is running on Linux, which is fantastic. I don't think <br/>there are any SCO UNIX boxes kicking around either, something I hated at <br/>the last place. I'm even allowed - forced, actually - to run Linux on my <br/>workstation; whichever distro I want. Of course, I put Ubuntu, but <br/>would've been happy even with the company standard of debian.<br/><br/>I've been accepted and welcomed to the company with open arms by <br/>everyone, and it's much less hostile an environment, but things still <br/>seem to get done! The developers actually do come into the office, and <br/>they actually do work. Fathom that! Everyone in the company, which spans <br/>numerous cities, is accessible by 4-digit extensions, so I can quickly <br/>memorize these, as opposed to memorizing many 10-digit numbers over <br/>multiple cities in multiple countries. Yes, everything seems to be much <br/>improved over the previous job.<br/><br/>So, as my previous supervisor, on my final day with the company, had <br/>mentioned it might be, being laid off was definitely a blessing in <br/>disguise. Even after four and a half months of sitting on my couch with <br/>no clue what the future held, collecting government money to attempt to <br/>make ends meet.<br/><br/>Now I don't have to move to another city, I don't have to keep sending <br/>out or delivering resumes and hoping for callbacks, nor do I have to <br/>worry about stress from feeling like a worthless non-contributor to our <br/>household. Now I can stay here where I have a doctor, friends, family, <br/>and a good church. Thank God!<br/><br/>To get onto another topic, E3 starts very soon, and I'm excited as all <br/>getup to see what Nintendo has in store!<br/><br/>That is all for now. :)<br/><br/><br/>2006-04-28<br/>----------<br/><br/>So, just over a month after being rejected by the job I said I wanted as <br/>a Perl developer, I got an unexpected call back, with an offer for the <br/>job. So I start on Monday. I also have been having some weird feelings <br/>in my left side of my throat, so hopefully my doctor listens to me.<br/><br/>I'm excited to get my hands on my Wii! The games that are coming out <br/>will be awesome, and I read an interview with someone from EA, and it <br/>was very interesting to hear about the new Madden. I'm not one for <br/>football, but I think I might try it this time around. EA has a studio <br/>dedicated to the Wii, so that's pretty cool. I am really excited about a <br/>Fight Night game, especially if the attachment also has gyros to detect <br/>motion. That would ROCK.<br/><br/><br/>2006-04-09<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, yesterday I figured out how to cross-compile again in Linux, for <br/>Windows. So that's good, because there is a new project I'm working on <br/>and it will need to run on Windows as well. I'll put more details here <br/>when something is ready for release.<br/><br/><br/>2006-03-19<br/>----------<br/><br/>So, I got an email from Mark Shuttleworth, and there will be a new <br/>Ubuntu derivative distro for multimedia use. He said he'll give me more <br/>details this week. I really hope that it is all in the repos and is <br/>official, and can be installed with apt-get install mubuntu (I assume it <br/>will be called Mubuntu, based on the domain registration).<br/><br/><br/>2006-03-16<br/>----------<br/><br/>I had a job interview today at an ISP/host/CLEC/VoIP/everything company. <br/>The position is for a Jr. Perl developer. I don't know Perl, but I <br/>started looking at it, and it doesn't look like it would take me long to <br/>pick it up. I'm pretty good at that sort of thing, and if I can do PHP <br/>and some C/C++ stuff, I'm sure Perl can't be that hard.<br/><br/>I really want that job. The guys seem really nice, the company seems <br/>stable, and best of all, the programmers use Debian!<br/><br/>I am ashamed that I messed up though. I didn't have my references on me <br/>because I asked a few people for advice, and they said to not bring <br/>anything with me. So I sent them my references through email, but I had <br/>an error on the page. One of my references' job title and employer were <br/>wrong... So I corrected it and sent it in. I hope they don't disqualify <br/>me because of that error. I only corrected it because I am honest and <br/>would not want to get a job by lying. For instance, some of my friends <br/>suggested I just not correct it - they'll never notice! they say. It <br/>would be easy enough to call up my reference and tell him of my error, <br/>and ask him to play it up. But dishonesty isn't the best policy, I <br/>think. So I really, really hope they realize this.<br/><br/>I'll post another update when I find out if I got the job or not... Time <br/>to go read some Perl docs. :)<br/><br/><br/>2006-01-31<br/>----------<br/><br/>Still no job. And ZERO sales of my CD. That's great. Life is so awesome.<br/><br/>I am working on a website for Ubuntu users, namely musicians, who want <br/>to use Ubuntu as a recording studio. You could check it out and <br/>contribute at www.ubuntustudio.com. I've spent one full week on it so <br/>far, and have had very little help.<br/><br/>I've also been talking with some guys from Canonical/Ubuntu and I have <br/>contacted Free from DeMuDi, with regards to getting Ubuntu to the point <br/>where it should be for musicians. This means we need an experimental <br/>kernel patch (obviously not in the main kernel tree for Ubuntu) as an <br/>option, as well as some software that is missing. Any real progress with <br/>this will be notated on my site.<br/><br/><br/>2005-12-05<br/>----------<br/><br/>I have finally put together my demo CD. It's called, "The Demo" and you <br/>can get it for $6.99 Real Money from www.cafepress.com/rivir - also, get <br/>yourself a thong while you're at it!<br/><br/>Only 11 more days left of my current job. Because I was laid off. Along <br/>with 5 others. Basically, our company is being offshored to Pakistan, <br/>the Philippines, Brazil or something like that, and France. Great.<br/><br/>In other news, I've recorded a Christmas song for a compilation that <br/>will also be sold through CafePress shortly. <br/><a href="http://www.cafepress.com/xmascomp">http://www.cafepress.com/xmascomp</a> will be the URL to buy it if you like.<br/><br/><br/>2005-11-16<br/>----------<br/><br/>It appears that the new Xbox 360's power supply is housed in an original <br/>Xbox. I was gonna get an Xbox 360, but I need to build an addition onto <br/>my house just for the power supply:<br/><br/><a href="http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/system/microsoft/xbox360/bundle.jpg">http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/system/microsoft/xbox360/bundle.jpg</a><br/><br/><br/>2005-05-08<br/>----------<br/><br/>I went to Toronto yesterday and ended up coming home with a new Roland <br/>TD-3KV electronic drum kit. Pretty cool stuff.<br/><br/><br/>2005-04-16<br/>----------<br/><br/>Here are most of the remaining mini-reviews. There are one or two that I <br/>haven't got to yet though. I'll add them later on.<br/><br/>Wyrick - Mental Floss<br/>Travis Wyrick is pretty cool, from everything I've heard to date. He did <br/>some good work on Gretchen's disc too. But, I can't help but wonder if <br/>his blatant rip offs of Trent Reznor go unnoticed... Have a listen to <br/>Sacrifice and compare to NIN's The Perfect Drug. I see similarities. But <br/>even worse, is a track that's not on Mental Floss, called More of You. <br/>If you can check that out, compare it to NIN's song Wish, and tell me <br/>that it's not lifted material... Anyhow, all that aside, I really like <br/>Wyrick, and even like those songs too. And hey, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe <br/>Travis came up with those melodys and chord progressions on his own <br/>without ever hearing the NIN songs. But somehow I doubt it, as even the <br/>other material reminds me of other bands/songs, but I can't place them <br/>all.<br/><br/>Grammatrain - Lonely House<br/>I knew most of the songs on this disc from MP3s I had from AudioGalaxy's <br/>free days. The main difference is that these are not live versions, so <br/>they sound a lot better. Some songs remind me of bands like Silverchair <br/>(specifically the track Execution). I don't mind these guys, but they <br/>aren't going to get tons of play in my CD player, at least not when I <br/>have CDs from bands like [null factor] and Oil.<br/><br/>Oil - Refine<br/>Wow! Awesome metal band. After hearing only the first track, I knew that <br/>they were closing in on Megadeth for my favorite metal band, and my wife <br/>said ealy on in the disc that she liked them more than Metallica (I keep <br/>telling her Metallica blows, but she doesn't listen). Anyhow, if you <br/>like metal, check out Oil. Sadly they've disbanded, but this disc is <br/>still worth getting. Global Warning is great too.<br/><br/>Ultimatum - Puppet of Destruction<br/>I'm not sure why I ordered this. I guess I was hoping for some great <br/>metal, but I should've checked out some samples or something first, <br/>because I can't stand the vocals. The drums and bass could use a lot of <br/>low-end boost. Maybe they'll grow on me, I dunno.<br/><br/>Torn Skin - Violence and Technology<br/>I love the guitars in this disc. They just sound really cool. Same goes <br/>with samples, a soft spot. Some of this reminded me of NIN. I have to <br/>listen to it a lot more for it to grow on me totally, but I like the <br/>Remote Control tracks the best so far. The unlisted track is kinda <br/>strange, but nice.<br/><br/>Autovoice - A Living Death<br/>I was not real impressed with some of the vocals on this disc. The <br/>second track has a real loud and obnoxious sound, which would appear to <br/>be a snare drum sound. It reappears on other tracks, such as Fallout. <br/>I'm sorry, but snare drums should not overpower the entire mix like <br/>this, no matter how radical a sound you're trying to go for. I try to <br/>like it, but in the end, it just causes me to skip the remainder of the <br/>track. The distorted-sounding vocals that appear throughout the album <br/>sound too quiet to me. I bought this because someone likened them to <br/>Skinny Puppy. It's maybe more like Skinny Puppy if they had the guy from <br/>Cybershadow or something guest singing, and if they used a rapid-fire <br/>shotgun for a snare drum. If it weren't for the mis-matched sound <br/>levels, I could probably get past the vocals and really get into this <br/>disc, but as it is, it's not real fun to listen to for me.<br/><br/>Feezel - Life Moves On<br/>Described as a "nastier-edged Megadeth," if you've heard this disc, you <br/>could understand my frustration and disappointment with that <br/>description. They're more like a heavy rock band, and not so much metal. <br/>The vocals sound pretty good, and the disc is mostly enjoyable, as long <br/>as you skip over the Church as Usual track. For some reason, I think <br/>that people who like Pillar may like these guys.<br/><br/>[null factor] - Purity<br/>I figured I'd love this disc right from the first moments of the opening <br/>track. I was right. Pretty much every track has a great underlying beat, <br/>great vocals, and overall, it's very danceable music (not that I dance, <br/>heh, nobody wants to see that). The Jagged Doctrine mix of Critical is a <br/>treat that has a very different sound compared to the rest of the disc. <br/>My favorite track so far is the opening cut, but this is becoming a <br/>favorite disc of mine quickly.<br/><br/>Symbiotica<br/>Very relaxing, female vocals on a bed of soft synth sounds with assorted <br/>other sounds and percussion. I like the sound of Wilderness Call, with <br/>that singing and percussive beat the best, but some songs are a bit too <br/>happy-sounding for my tastes. In fact, the entire CD is kinda out of my <br/>range, but if I ever need to fall asleep, and fast, I'll pop this disc <br/>in.<br/><br/>The Way Sect Bloom - Effloresce<br/>I knew of these guys from the Electro Shock Therapy comp, and I'm glad I <br/>finally ordered their disc. The song Washed reminds me highly of Circle <br/>of Dust, and this is no shock, considering Klayton worked on this disc, <br/>and I think this song in particular.<br/><br/>Elder - Plagues, Woes<br/>I bought this, and now, not even a week after it arrived, the price was <br/>cut in half! This just burns me up! I'm outraged! I could've paid only <br/>50 cents for this disc, but no, they ripped me! Oh well, at least it's <br/>almost decent for a grunge band. Some songs feel out of place, like <br/>River, and lyrics like those on Down the Stairs seem kinda silly. Some <br/>of the disc sounds repetitive, but hey, it's grunge. Some songs stand <br/>out, unlike Wish for Eden's Pet the Fish disc, but still, they're few <br/>and far between.<br/><br/><br/>2005-04-12<br/>----------<br/><br/>More CDs came in today.<br/><br/>Sometime Sunday - Drain<br/>Very cool grungy type stuff. Sounds similar to Soundgarden and the like. <br/>I like this album so far.<br/><br/>Wish for Eden - Pet the Fish<br/>This album is comprised of 10 identical tracks. Or at least that was <br/>what I thought... Upon further examination, apparently the songs have <br/>different lyrics.<br/><br/>Fell Venus - @<br/>Some pretty strange singing on this album. I don't really know why I got <br/>rid of the first copy of it that I owned, but some songs can get on your <br/>nerves. Nevermind the weird track numbering.<br/><br/>Mortal - Nu En Jin<br/>This is much better vocals than the previous Mortal albums I've <br/>heard, even though I didn't mind some of their older stuff, in <br/>moderation. This is a great change, and totally different than Wake, <br/>which was kinda sore-thumbish for them.<br/><br/><br/>2005-04-09<br/>----------<br/><br/>Ever<br/>Wow! Amazing stuff here. I got goosebumps listening to some of it... <br/>Also, they sent me two copies of the CD - one of them was signed too. <br/>I'm not sure if the second copy was a mistake or what, so I'm gonna <br/>email them about it.<br/><br/>Virgin Black - Elegant... and Dying<br/>Very nice. I've always loved them since the first time I heard their <br/>stuff, way before AudioGalaxy was turned into a pay service. I own <br/>Sombre Romantic and Trance discs, and now this. All are masterpieces. I <br/>really love listening to their music. I did notice that the track times <br/>listed on the back are sometimes shorter than the tracks on the disc. <br/>That's kinda strange.<br/><br/>Generation - Brutal Reality<br/>Very cool sounding industrial metal hybrid. I like the samples they use, <br/>and the vocals are cool. I am glad I gambled on this one.<br/><br/><br/>2005-04-08<br/>----------<br/><br/>Some CDs are in. Below are the first few reviews.<br/><br/>Global Warning - Enemy Within<br/>A great metal album... The singer has a good sound for his vocals... <br/>Kinda reminds me a bit of Jon from Korn crossed with James from <br/>Metallica, with a touch of Dale from Bride for vocals, coupled with a <br/>cross between Titanic, Virgin Black, Metallica for the music. Others <br/>might compare them to Disturbed or Godsmack or POD, based on what I've <br/>read. Anyhow, great band, they have clips on their site. If you like <br/>metal at all, check out the clips at least.<br/><br/>Judean Radiostatic - Flux<br/>Nice sound. I like the samples used in the first track... Something I <br/>really miss in a lot of the Christian music I listen to. Sometimes the <br/>vocals reminded me of Skinny Puppy and sometimes a bit of Marilyn <br/>Manson. The occasional female vocals are nice too.<br/><br/>dead turns alive - Salvation and Despair<br/>Some more samples, which are great, and some really good tracks. Some of <br/>them I didn't like as much, as they sounded too technoy. My favorite <br/>track is definitely Influence, which you can get a live video of on <br/>their website. I have to listen to it more for it to grow on me, because <br/>a few of the songs were disappointing, but I'm sure that'll change.<br/><br/>Gretchen - In the Mean Time<br/>I was pleasantly surprised that I liked most of the songs on this album, <br/>as I was expecting it to be like No Doubt. The CD has tons of extras <br/>too, such as the entire album pre-ripped to 128Kbps MP3s, wallpapers, <br/>icons, videos, lyrics... Very cool batch of extras, and thankfully it's <br/>not all embedded into a single file... So then I can view it all in <br/>Linux. Anyhow, it's a good female-fronted rock band, and a song or to <br/>reminds me a tiny bit of Evanescence, but more rockish. No piano.<br/><br/>Fatal Blast Whip - Constellation<br/>The soothing sounds of this album put me to sleep. I'll have to listen <br/>to it again. I like the sound of the vocals for sure. Very nice. I'll <br/>give it another listen when I'm more awake.<br/><br/>I love them all so far, but my favorites are Global Warning and <br/>Gretchen. Well... Each album has a few tracks that are awesome... I <br/>guess I just like them all.<br/><br/><br/>2005-03-31<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, I just decided that I'm sick of crappily-named MP3 files. So I did <br/>a quick search of my APT repositories, and I discovered EasyTAG. Wow! I <br/>sure wish I didn't procrastinate in searching for a decent MP3 file <br/>renamer/ID3 tag editor. It's sweet. If you're looking for one, check it <br/>out. No, I'm not with them. I can't hardly code yet.<br/><br/><br/>2005-03-27<br/>----------<br/><br/>I modded an Xbox yesterday and upgraded hard drives in two Xboxes. This <br/>means I had cash to spend. And I decided to buy me a whole new musical <br/>library. Here are the two dozen discs I am expecting in the coming <br/>weeks. I'll try posting a review here of each album as I listen to them, <br/>if I remember.<br/><br/>Autovoice - Living Death<br/>Dead Turns Alive - Salvation and Despair<br/>Elder - Plagues and Woes<br/>Ever<br/>Feezel - Life Moves On<br/>Fell Venus - @<br/>Generation - Brutal Reality<br/>Global Warning - Enemy Within<br/>Grammatrain - Lonely House<br/>Gretchen - In the Mean Time<br/>Jagged Doctrine - Absolution<br/>Judean Radio Static - Flux<br/>Mortal - Nu En Jin<br/>Null Factor - Purity<br/>Oil - Refine<br/>Sometime Sunday - Drain<br/>Symbiotica<br/>Torn Skin - Violence & Technology<br/>Ultimatum - Puppet Of Destruction<br/>Virgin Black - Elegant and Dying<br/>Way Sect Bloom - Effloresce<br/>Wish For Eden - Pet the Fish<br/>Wyrick - Mental Floss<br/>Yonderboy - Mission Of Mercy<br/><br/><br/>2005-03-05<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, so far on this new job I haven't really used Asterisk yet.<br/><br/>I've been learning a lot of stuff about SIP and general telecom. Well, <br/>not so much learning new telecom stuff as remembering stuff from <br/>college. Anyhow, I've been using iptel.org's SER software on Debian, <br/>which is great. Who ever thought that I'd get to set up Linux at this <br/>company, and get paid to do it?<br/><br/>Well, nothing really new. I did put Ubuntu on my laptop and my desktop. <br/>So far I'm impressed with it. It's user-friendly, but not in the same <br/>way that Mandrake et al are. Ubuntu does things nicely, whereas <br/>Mandrake's tools, or whoever else you want to compare to, tend to get in <br/>the way. Moving from Debian to Ubuntu, was it a good change? I can't <br/>tell you that yet, but so far it seems great. I'd like to see this <br/>distro raise to the top of the pack. There are a lot of names working on <br/>it - Jeff Waugh, Daniel Stone, etc. It's impressive so far, anyhow.<br/><br/><br/>2005-01-31<br/>----------<br/><br/>Today marks the beginning of the second week of my new job as a Jr. <br/>Telecom Technician. That's a fancy title for "Asterisk/Linux Research <br/>and Development." This is supposed to last 6 months, but might run <br/>longer/permanently if the company decides to move this into production.<br/><br/><br/>2005-01-12<br/>----------<br/><br/>This Christmas I got money, plus I sold a bunch of old gear. Now I have <br/>spent close to $900-$1000 on music gear. This is insane! Oh yeah, and my <br/>RM1x came in and it was severely beaten.<br/><a href="http://icculus.org/~dolson/rm1x.html">http://icculus.org/~dolson/rm1x.html</a><br/><br/><br/>2004-12-20<br/>----------<br/><br/>Jim Gaffigan is a funny comic. Check him out if you're interested and <br/>haven't heard of him yet. I wouldn't plug his website <br/>(jimgaffigan.com) in my .plan or anything like that, because that's not <br/>me. Besides, I'm sure you could find his website (jimgaffigan.com) on a <br/>search engine if you wanted to go to his website (jimgaffigan.com).<br/><br/><br/>2004-12-09<br/>----------<br/><br/>Darrell Abbott, aka Dimebag Darrell, is dead. It is a sad, sad day.<br/><br/>Just yesterday I was in the mall, holding a Damageplan CD in my hands, <br/>wondering what the ex-Pantera members were up to these days... And then <br/>last night, this happened.<br/><br/>He, along with four others were murdered before a lone police officer <br/>showed up and took down the killer with a shotgun blast to the face.<br/><br/>Darrell was an amazing guitarist. I was glad to see the tributes on <br/>Megadeth.com, Anthrax.com, ZakkWylde.com, and Sepultura.com.br. Very <br/>classy for these musicians to show their respect for this loss.<br/><br/>I sure hope that a rash of copy-cat murders do not break out, but <br/>wouldn't be surprised.<br/><br/><br/>2004-12-08<br/>----------<br/><br/>I just discovered jbidwatcher. Sweet, open-source goodness. For a Java <br/>program, it sure isn't bad. It could be worse.<br/><br/>Hopefully this will help me win a Groovebox for cheap.<br/><br/><br/>2004-12-04<br/>----------<br/><br/>If anyone has any used Grooveboxes, let me know... I'm this -| |- close <br/>to buying one off eBay.<br/><br/><a href="http://icculus.org/~dolson/wishlist">http://icculus.org/~dolson/wishlist</a> (I'll be adding to this soon)<br/><br/><br/>2004-11-17<br/>----------<br/><br/>Holy crap, Megadeth rocked! That is all.<br/><br/><br/>2004-11-11<br/>----------<br/><br/>I am SOOO hooked on getting a Groovebox. If anyone has one or knows a <br/>good cheap place to get one, LET ME KNOW! I'll probably get a Roland <br/>MC-303 to start, but right now I've got a MC-505 on loan for a week... <br/>Trying to not get too stuck to it, but it's gonna be hard.<br/><br/>I didn't get to go to Skinny Puppy yesterday. That sucked. But I'm <br/>counting on them touring again... Here's hoping.<br/><br/>I'm going through all the crap I have and trying to find stuff to sell. <br/>I'll list some things here and on eBay.<br/><br/><br/>2004-10-27<br/>----------<br/><br/>I'm totally against it and offended by it. I'm going out to let my real <br/>talent show, not to just stand there and dance around. Personally, I'd <br/>never lip-synch. It's just not me. -- Ashlee Simpson, Lucky Magazine<br/><br/><br/>2004-10-26<br/>----------<br/><br/>Just bought tickets to Megadeth today. I can't wait to go! Still looking <br/>for a ride to Skinny Puppy too.<br/><br/>I move to a house in 3 days, so this is pretty sweet. We're packing and <br/>stuff, and it's coming along.<br/><br/><br/>2004-10-19<br/>----------<br/><br/>I packed my Xbox away. Moving in two weeks and I haven't touched it <br/>since I got Zelda anyhow.<br/><br/>I got a USB CF card reader today. Read about it here: <br/><a href="http://icculus.org/~dolson/centrioscfreader.html">http://icculus.org/~dolson/centrioscfreader.html</a><br/><br/>Nothing else really new. I'm about to eat my 6th Big Mac of the day.<br/><br/><br/>2004-10-10<br/>----------<br/><br/>A little while back, at the end of September, I got a Gamecube. I didn't <br/>have to pay a dime for it either. I simply traded some old Windows games <br/>for it. Who do you think got the better deal?<br/><br/>I got: Gamecube, cables, controller, MadCatz controller, Super Mario <br/>Sunshine, Memory Card 59, Super Smash Bros. Melee, and Memory Card 16x.<br/><br/>He got: Gettysburg, Populous 3, Starsiege, GTA2, Red Alert, Sanitarium, <br/>Summoner, Nox, Clue (from a cereal box), Fallout, and Aquanox (tossed in <br/>as a freebie as I had two copies anyhow).<br/><br/>The verdict? I think considering I don't run Windows, I got a fantastic <br/>deal. Even if I did run Windows, it's hard to beat this swap.<br/><br/>So now I've forgotten all about Fable and my Xbox in general... I've <br/>been playing Zelda on the 'cube whenever I've had time away from working <br/>on osCommerce and osTickets for my business site that I'm starting up.<br/><br/>If you haven't taken our quick survey, please do.<br/><br/>I'm not very far in Zelda yet. I'm just on my way to Dragon's Roost or <br/>whatever it's called. My wife is playing it right now, and she was stuck <br/>at the three statues, so she asked me to catch up and figure it out, so <br/>I did, then I saved and passed the controller over to her for her to <br/>play. Heh. She didn't realize she could grab the statue and pull it <br/>forward. :)<br/><br/><br/>2004-10-03<br/>----------<br/><br/><a href="http://www.clickycart.com/survey/">http://www.clickycart.com/survey/</a> <-- please do that if you haven't <br/>already. I'm going to start up an online store, and I wanna know what <br/>sorts of things people buy and what they use to pay with. Thanks!<br/><br/>23:54 < mousematt> whats the weather like where u are today?<br/>23:55 < dolson> according to my Gnome applet, it's 9 Celcius and cloudy<br/><br/><br/>2004-09-18<br/>----------<br/><br/>I'm about to try out Fable. I wonder if it'll be good or if it'll <br/>suck...<br/><br/>Well, if it sucks, I can always go listen to the Megadeth album.<br/><br/><br/>2004-09-14<br/>----------<br/><br/>Megadeth's new album rules.<br/><br/><br/>2004-09-12<br/>----------<br/><br/>I just downloaded a video from Megadeth's new album, which was shown on <br/>MTV2, and I was confused... I thought my sound card was dying. Then I <br/>thought that the video was a bad quality TV rip. Then I realized that <br/>MTV bleeps out the words "death" and "high." I could almost, ALMOST, <br/>understand bleeping "high" if the verse referred to drugs, but it <br/>doesn't - the verse is "I can't kick high enough."<br/><br/>This is truly stupid.<br/><br/><br/>2004-08-22<br/>----------<br/>The house is ours.<br/><br/>Someone ported my BattlePong to Xbox! Haha. Here's a link: <br/><a href="http://xhomebrew.netfirms.com/battlepong.shtml">http://xhomebrew.netfirms.com/battlepong.shtml</a> I found out by accident <br/>while checking out an FTP server for a new dashboard. Crazy.<br/><br/><br/>2004-08-20<br/>----------<br/>So today was the inspection for the house we are most likely buying. <br/>Insurance said they would insure the house, our mortgage was approved, <br/>and nothing super major showed up in the inspection report. We'll be <br/>moving in on Nov. 1st, assuming we decide to go ahead and the lawyer <br/>doesn't find any legal issues.<br/><br/>Yesterday the inspector sent over the contract to me in Word .doc <br/>format, and I had asked if he had an alternative format, even a PDF so I <br/>could print it out and he said he didn't. Well, today he came to my <br/>apartment to get his check, and he said "so, you run Linux then?" and <br/>just totally opened himself up for me to lay the smack down. He asked a <br/>couple more questions, and I mentioned that I don't generally worry <br/>about security, viruses, spyware, and so on and explained why. He asked <br/>if it was hard to use, and I asked if he had seen it before. He hadn't. <br/>And now he has... I sat him down in front of my PC and showed him what <br/>his contract looked like in OpenOffice.org, as the formatting is <br/>slightly off. I showed him Evolution. I showed him FireFox and mentioned <br/>that CERT recommended ditching IE for the time being, and that FireFox <br/>works on Windows too. I showed him some different themes for Gnome, and <br/>he seemed impressed. He asked how hard it was to set up. I started <br/>explaining that some hardware might not work, his handheld, printer, and <br/>proprietary software might not work, and so on. I was just being honest <br/>about it. He said "that's alright, I could probably run Linux on my home <br/>network and it'd be fine." So, who knows? Maybe it's the start of <br/>something. :) I just emailed him the links to Gnoppix and Knoppix as he <br/>requested when I mentioned these distros, and I also included a lot of <br/>other info, and offered assistance if he wanted it.<br/><br/>This really does feel like a religion and like I just got someone saved. <br/>It's sorta scary.<br/><br/><br/>2004-07-10<br/>----------<br/>I just had to write a note here about how I am feeling right now... <br/>Megadeth is such a great band. Dave Mustaine is one of the coolest <br/>musicians when it comes to being cool with his fans. He posts on the <br/>Megadeth forums, he releases MP3s occasionally, and everything. If <br/>you're a fan, and you didn't know, he's releasing a new album in <br/>September, called The System Has Failed, and he's also releasing all of <br/>the previous records (except KIMB, since it's done already), remixed and <br/>remastered, with bonus tracks, at the end of this month. I feel pretty <br/>sorry that I didn't like Megadeth instantly upon hearing them, but I was <br/>blind at the time, and thought that Metallica were a superior band. It <br/>isn't so - listen to the musical detail and the vocals. James is a great <br/>singer, but Dave is just better. At least that's my opinion.<br/><br/>Oh, and I recorded a new track too. I'll be releasing it on the RiviR <br/>website soon, once my wife is done recording her vocals, and I give the <br/>song a title.<br/><br/><br/>2004-06-27<br/>----------<br/><br/>So my co-workers and I like gimping each other's faces onto pictures. <br/>Well, now we have a website to allow easy access to these things. Check <br/>it out at www.gimpdesk.tk and leave some comments if you like. Trust me, <br/>the pictures are funnier when you know these guys... So you might not <br/>even wanna bother.<br/><br/>Time to go play Showdown for the first time.<br/><br/><br/>2004-06-22<br/>----------<br/><br/>So I call my ISP (Sympatico) when I get home from work, because their <br/>DNS servers were not working. I couldn't ping even yahoo.ca, but I did <br/>have an IP address on my ppp0. Well, I call them up, and I ask if their <br/>DNS servers are down. Apparently they were not aware of any problems. I <br/>told him that I couldn't ping yahoo.ca, but I was assigned an IP <br/>address, and there is traffic on the ppp interface. He confirmed with <br/>me, "So you can't browse a webpage, right?" I said "right." Because I <br/>couldn't. So he's like "okay, let me pull up the info for Can't Browse a <br/>Website." I tried pinging again, and it started to work. I said "oh, <br/>nevermind, it's working now. But just for reference, can I confirm that <br/>I have the correct DNS IP addresses?" And he says "I can tell you how to <br/>get your email...?? Will that help?"<br/><br/>...<br/><br/>......<br/><br/>"No, it's working. I just want to know if I have the proper DNS <br/>addresses or not," I replied.<br/>"I don't know what you mean," he argued.<br/>"I just need to know the IP address for your DNS servers."<br/>"Okay, just a minute."<br/><br/>Then he puts me on hold for a bit. When he gets back, he says, "okay, <br/>it's 192 dot 168 dot 2 dot 1."<br/>"Really?" I exclaimed, puzzled at how he would guess me internal LAN's <br/>DNS server address, which was incorrect, but oh, so close.<br/>"That's what they tell me," was his reply.<br/><br/>The End.<br/><br/><br/>2004-06-07<br/>----------<br/><br/>So I sit here waiting for the Calgary Flames to get their act together <br/>and win the Stanley Cup. It ain't gonna happen. So close, yet so far <br/>away. I'm used to let-downs. I work on HelpDesk for TeleSpectrum.<br/><br/><br/>2004-06-05<br/>----------<br/><br/>So I sit here waiting for the Calgary Flames to start off this game 6 of <br/>the Stanley Cup final versus the Tampa Bay Lightning. My prediction is <br/>that Calgary will pull it off tonight, but it will be a great game. So <br/>sad for Tampa, but I don't care! I just want Canada to get a Cup again. <br/>It's been many years since we did... And Montreal doesn't count. Don <br/>Cherry rules, and this might be the last time I see him on Hockey Night <br/>in Canada... And he's going out with style - a huge-ass hat with the <br/>Canadian flag on it... C'mon Calgary, do it for our country.<br/><br/>I've been playing Thief: Deadly Shadows lately, and I'm so glad that I <br/>have an Xbox. It's the only real first-person game that I can stand to <br/>play without a keyboard and mouse combo. It's got some subtle <br/>improvements over the older PC-only predecessors that make for a much <br/>smoother game... I love it.<br/><br/>I've been working on Battle Tic Tac Toe again now that I have a laptop. <br/>Progress reports are up on www.scapegoatsoftware.com in the Developer <br/>Journal section (look under Projects).<br/><br/>Still no donations for my plastic surgery...<br/><br/><br/>2004-05-15<br/>----------<br/><br/>I have now watched An Evening With Kevin Smith four times. I just love<br/>it... I don't... know... why.<br/><br/>Also, if you feel like donating money to my Make Dana Look Like Mr. Bean<br/>Fund, I accept PayPal payments at dana@mandrakeusers.org and I'd also<br/>accept cash, check, or money order.<br/><br/><br/>2004-04-08<br/>----------<br/><br/>I may be recording some new material this weekend, inspired by Skinny <br/>Puppy's reformation. Until it is released, check this out:<br/><br/> (18:15:19) rad89: man do you know where i can get the cd key <br/> for microsfot works 7.0<br/> (18:15:29) DOlson: www.openoffice.org<br/><br/>I learned today that the only thing better than my Burger King Whopper <br/>is someone else's.<br/><br/><br/>2004-04-05<br/>----------<br/><br/>New Skinny Puppy album makes me really happy... It opens the doors to <br/>possibilites that I had only dreamed about... I hope they come to <br/>Canada, so I know when to book my vacation.<br/><br/><br/>2004-03-26<br/>----------<br/><br/>Just got off the phone with a cool chick from Nintendo. Here's a tip to <br/>all you foreigners: selling pirated and hacked GameBoy Advance games on <br/>eBay is NOT COOL. You rip me off, you leave me with no choice...<br/><br/><br/>2004-03-17<br/>----------<br/><br/>And back to Debian I go. SmoothWall decided it doesn't want to see my <br/>NICs anymore, and the day before, it decided to turn off my Internet <br/>conenction just because it can. Well, screw that.<br/><br/><br/>2004-03-14<br/>----------<br/><br/>So the power went out for an hour and a half in a good portion of the <br/>city today, killing my 212-day uptime... So I tried out a SmoothWall <br/>install, and it's working well, except the IP spoof protection... I'll <br/>have to set up a DMZ. It's all good.<br/><br/><br/>2004-03-09<br/>----------<br/><br/>I decided I will write Unreal 3 in VBscript. Transgaming will probably <br/>get the vbscript.exe stuff working great in Linux by the time I'm done.<br/><br/><br/>2004-02-23<br/>----------<br/><br/>I don't know why I am admitting this, but I really love That 70s Show...<br/><br/><br/>2004-01-11<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, I have accepted a position on XboxAddict.com as an <br/>interviewer/reviewer/previewer. I'm working on my first review, which <br/>will be of The Hobbit. A game that nobody liked except for me... I will <br/>get free games once my trial membership is over, so that's good - the <br/>less stuff I gotta pay for, the better. It's fun doing reviews and <br/>interviews, and if I can get free games or free previews of games, all <br/>the better.<br/><br/>In other news, I did actually complete The Hobbit, and this weekend I <br/>played through Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance again, in preparation for <br/>the sequel's release later this month.<br/><br/><br/>2004-01-02<br/>----------<br/><br/>There's always something good goin' down at Mr. Sub.<br/><br/><br/>2003-12-28<br/>----------<br/><br/>So I got some money for Christmas, and bought a nice 27" Sanyo TV with <br/>S-Video and component inputs, as well as the standard composite inputs. <br/>I also got a high-definition pack for the Xbox, so now I need an optical <br/>audio receiver!! :) Been mostly watching movies lately, such as LOTR and <br/>stuff. Picked up Jurrasic Park for $4.66 at Wal-Mart too. Oh yeah, my TV <br/>was regular $379, but we got $100 off on Boxing Day... Gotta love that <br/>Boxing Day. :)<br/><br/>Maybe next year I'll buy a real bed!<br/><br/><br/>2003-11-23<br/>----------<br/><br/>Perogies + Deep Fryer = Dynamite Idea.<br/><br/>Try it!<br/><br/>Oh, and onion rings are Hard To Make. At least the recipe I tried didn't <br/>work out well at all...<br/><br/><br/>2003-11-13<br/>----------<br/><br/>Just when I get Star Choice hooked up and working, something has to rip <br/>my attention away from it... I figured that would happen.<br/><br/>I got The Hobbit for Xbox today, as an early Christmas gift... I only <br/>got it new because that way I got the free copy of The Hobbit novel too, <br/>for preordering. Well, this game is quite good. It's cartoony, not as <br/>bad as Zelda: The Wind Wanker or that new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles <br/>game, but certainly not realistic. It doesn't matter. It's still good. <br/>Some elements in it remind me a LOT of The Simpsons Hit & Run game, such <br/>as the picking up of the coins and whatnot without necessarily touching <br/>them. That's a nice feature, IMHO. So far, I haven't gotten far in the <br/>game, as I wanna take my time. I have until January to play this, at <br/>which point I will (hopefully) have a new game to play - Baldur's Gate: <br/>Dark Alliance 2. But until then, playing as Biblo will likely take up a <br/>lot of what little free time I have these days.<br/><br/>My new-ish job is going well. I'm taking calls all day long, I'm <br/>learning new things, getting more comfortable. On top of that, today was <br/>pizza day - the head of IT, who happens to work just feet away from our <br/>division (as opposed to in a different country with some of the other <br/>divisions) whipped out a credit card (the company's card, I hope) and <br/>ordered 7 pizzas, like 24 cans of pop, plates, napkins, dipping sauce... <br/>It was good. I wish I could have eaten more though. I should have <br/>brought a couple slices home, except that I had my mind on other things <br/>when I was walking out the door... Namely, The Hobbit.<br/><br/><br/>2003-10-31<br/>----------<br/><br/>"Now Fox has a new rule that we can't do those little fake news crawls <br/>on the bottom of the screen in a cartoon because it might confuse the <br/>viewers into thinking it's real news."<br/> -- Matt Groening<br/><br/>Uhh... The Simpsons is a CARTOON. Fox doesn't think much of their <br/>viewers, if they think that we will confuse a cartoon with an actual <br/>news feed...<br/><br/>Oh yeah, so I ordered Star Choice (satellite TV) yesterday... Yay.<br/><br/><br/>2003-10-28<br/>----------<br/><br/>"WOW THAT WAS FAST SHIPPING! ATTTTTTTTTTTTT"<br/> -- Feedback left on eBay<br/><br/>My question is: are Ts better than pluses?<br/><br/><br/>2003-10-26<br/>----------<br/><br/>"See, you people say you have enough consoles, and a powerful PC, but <br/>whenever a new console comes out, you people always buy it."<br/> -- Robert Shambro, Infinium Labs<br/><br/>That is all.<br/><br/><br/>2003-10-18<br/>----------<br/><br/>Okay, so I went and got my CPIC for job #2 today, and my interview is <br/>scheduled for Monday... I go to work today, and find out that job #1 <br/>decides that they want me (yay! I got the position I wanted) so now I <br/>have a useless CPIC that cost me $10 but I had to get it else Murphy <br/>would have laid the smack down on me and cost me both job #1 and job #2, <br/>and then job #3 likely wouldn't have panned out either because I haven't <br/>called them back in over a week... But, since I have job #1, that means <br/>I get to start Monday and make a salary, and I don't have to telemarket <br/>anymore! I'm working in my field as a help desk technician, with options <br/>for future specialization in different areas such as NT admin and so <br/>forth. I'll update you all sometime to let you know how I like it.<br/>:D <-- that's me!<br/><br/><br/>2003-10-14<br/>----------<br/><br/>So last night a friend of mine who works for a hosting company convinced <br/>me to register a domain. So, www.scapegoatsoftware.com is now online. :)<br/><br/>I gotta go get my CPIC done soon, else I can't get that other job.<br/><br/><br/>2003-10-11<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, it's been a while since I've updated this thing. Still waiting to <br/>hear about that Help Desk job. I have another interview for a Business <br/>Desk Analyst on the 20th, and I think I'm going to take it, even though <br/>it's only part-time, because it's more in-line with my field than <br/>telefrickinmarketing...<br/><br/>Anyhow, onto the good stuff...<br/><br/>Scapegoat Software is now working on Battle Tic Tac Toe. I'm the <br/>programmer (*ack* *cough* *hack*), and all the graphics are pretty much <br/>ready. Emmett is set to do the sound track, and if we think we can sell <br/>16 copies+ of this game, then we're probably gonna go for it... This way <br/>we can pay Emmett and start making a bit of cash. But we aren't entirely <br/>sure yet. Anyhow, information, developer journal, screenshots, etc are <br/>all up on our site: <a href="http://sgoats.cjb.net/">http://sgoats.cjb.net/</a><br/><br/>If you'd be interested in purchasing this game for $10 (download) or $15 <br/>(on CD, shipped to your home), then please PLEASE let me know. You can <br/>email me at dolson@icculus.org, and that way we can judge if this game <br/>should go commercial or not. Thanks in advance.<br/><br/><br/>2003-09-21<br/>----------<br/><br/>I had an interview for Help Desk Technician, and it went well. I want <br/>that job. Or any job. As long as I can stop telemarketing. Bring it on, <br/>I'm ready. I can take it. PLEASE!<br/><br/>So, here's my Linux-related prediction: Transgaming will stop supporting <br/>Linux and switch business plans to become competition for MacSoft... <br/>Yeah, that's my prediction. So, if it happens, remember, you heard it <br/>here first. :)<br/><br/><br/>2003-09-13<br/>----------<br/><br/>< me> Hi, this is Dana Olson calling on behalf of SBC, how are you <br/>today?<br/>< dude> Hi, I'm on that Do Not Call list.<br/>< me> You're on our Do Not Call list?<br/>< dude> No, I'm on the National Do Not Call list.<br/>< me> Oh, the one that takes effect on October 1st.<br/>< dude> ...<br/>< me> ... It's September right now...<br/>< dude> ...<br/>< me> So we are allowed to call you until October...<br/>< dude> ... Okay, send me the info in the mail.<br/>< me> I will do that, and you have a great night. Thanks for speaking <br/>with SBC.<br/><br/>Yes, that conversation actually took place tonight. I just thought I'd <br/>share, even if no one sees any humor value in it. :)<br/><br/>Anyhow, I've got an interview for an inbound call center on Tuesday. If <br/>I'm offered the position there, I'm about 99% sure that I'm going to <br/>take it. The pay is better, and I can finally get out of calling people <br/>during their dinner. And just in time for the National Do Not Call list <br/>to take effect. :)<br/><br/>Today I had an information session at a consulting firm, and I all but <br/>have the position for supply business desk analyst... I'd be doing <br/>password resets mostly to start, and that's FINE by me. I hope that I <br/>can work it all out around my schedule, whatever it will be then, so <br/>that I can do it on the side (it's a supply position, so no guaranteed <br/>hours at all) of a regular job for a while. I think I have some <br/>decisions to make soon. It's exciting, while unsettling at the same <br/>time, since I don't want to alienate any of my opportunities... <br/>Decisions, decisions...<br/><br/><br/>2003-09-10<br/>----------<br/><br/>07:16 < LordHavoc> I just love knowledge, I try to absorb everything<br/>07:17 <+sibn> knowledge is kind of a pain in the ass to maintain, though.<br/>07:17 <+warthawg> I have some catlitter like that<br/><br/>Heh. Joe Barr has his moments (none of which appear on LinuxWorld.com).<br/><br/>In other news, I had a test at a different call center, and they know <br/>that I want a tech position. Hopefully something comes of that. Also, I <br/>have an information session at a consulting company, the one that I <br/>really wanted to work at when I first moved here, and they are hiring <br/>someone for part-time. Hopefully they want me. Also, my current place of <br/>employment is hiring a help desk technician, but unfortunately, they <br/>require a driver's license and a vehicle, which I don't have/can't <br/>afford. Well, here's hoping they don't care so much about that.<br/><br/><br/>2003-08-25<br/>----------<br/><br/>God, do I hate my job. Not only does the job suck, but the company <br/>decided that my Monday off will now become a MANDATORY work day. To top <br/>that off, I was in the top 18 in my group, so I gotta go in at 2PM and <br/>stay until 10PM. I signed up to work from 5PM to 12AM. This is a rip, I <br/>want my money back-- erm... Fooey. Someone hook me up with a better job.<br/><br/>I was playing Morrowind a bit today too. I'm not very far into the game, <br/>even though it's the only Xbox game I own, but yeah, I do plan on <br/>finishing it someday, if such a thing is possible... I haven't finished <br/>a game since... Oh gee, what was it... Return to Krondor, I think. Boy, <br/>that was a great game... I would love a third one in that series, as <br/>long as it was like RTK, and not like the first one. Oh, and as long as <br/>it was on Linux or Xbox.<br/><br/><br/>2003-08-18<br/>----------<br/><br/>So it's been one year since I deleted my Windows 98 partition. Yay me.<br/><br/>I'm trying to get time to record more music, but until then, there will <br/>be two songs on my mp3.com page, once the second one gets approved.<br/><br/>Time to get ready for work. And I thought today was going well...<br/><br/><br/>2003-08-12<br/>----------<br/><br/>03:07 <+Mongoose> it's pretty damn sad I've read more stories in <br/>morrowind than r/l<br/><br/>So, my weekend was alright. Other than my wife getting glass in her <br/>foot, and thereby we were forced to buy crutches. Geez.<br/><br/>Anyhow, I finally finished recording "Again" and most of "So Perfect" <br/>which will be on my album "hopefear" someday... Someday soon.<br/><br/><br/>2003-08-06<br/>----------<br/><br/>23:51 < lgp-michael|svrm> coool a cat just wandered into the house<br/>23:51 <+dolson> < lgp-michael|svrm> mmm.. I can eat today<br/><br/>23:59 < floam> i can see lgp-michael|svrm sitting in the living room <br/>dressing up his linux games and having them talk to each other<br/>00:00 < lgp-michael|svrm> I cant dress them up, I cant afford to, they <br/>have imaginary clothes<br/><br/>MUST... PLAY... MOHAA... BUT... CAN'T...<br/><br/><br/>2003-08-03<br/>----------<br/><br/>Okay, here are some tips for you irritable Americans:<br/><br/>- When a Telemarketer calls your home, they are not doing so to be <br/>assholes about it.<br/>- If you don't want the service at the present time, and this is what <br/>you tell them, they WILL call you back.<br/>- Chances are good that these Telemarketers are people like me: <br/>desperate to make money to pay bills and rent. These people are not <br/>trying to upset you, but rather they are trying to do their job.<br/>- They most likely work for a call center, which is contracted to call <br/>on behalf of other companies... You probably don't get the relevance of <br/>this fact, but I will get to this...<br/>- If you don't want to be bothered anymore, ask NICELY to be put onto <br/>the DO NOT CALL list. Here is an example of how you would do so: in a <br/>nice voice, say "Can you put me on your do not call list?" and the <br/>Telemarketer will gladly oblige. This is required by law. If another <br/>Telemarketer calls you, it MIGHT NOT BE FROM THE SAME COMPANY! So there <br/>is no sense getting all pissed off at them. Also, it usually takes about <br/>4 to 6 weeks to have your name fully removed from any given company's <br/>calling lists.<br/>- If you don't want any more calls from a given telemarketing firm, ASK <br/>the Telemarketer on the phone what company they are employed by. Many <br/>times, the Telemarketer will give you a different name than the company <br/>they are representing, because that's just how this business works. Tell <br/>them to put your name on THEIR do not call list, and then you won't get <br/>any calls from that firm for a full five years, as required by law.<br/>- The trick is to be nice about it, and MAKE SURE that they do take you <br/>off the list. Don't hang up until you have your name off the list. <br/>- Do NOT lie to Telemarketers. They do not hold anything personally <br/>against you. There is no need to lie to them. If you don't want to be <br/>bothered, you know what your options are, so DO NOT TELL THEM TO CALL <br/>BACK AT A LATER TIME.<br/>- Telemarketers call people randomly, from lists given by the company <br/>they represent. Just because you don't like the service or product <br/>being offered, doesn't mean that the next call won't become a sale. If <br/>you aren't interested, don't waste the Telemarketer's time and your <br/>time, just put your name on the DO NOT CALL list, and be done with it.<br/>- Don't say you are not interested before you have heard what the offer <br/>is. I could call someone randomly one day, offering $1 Million dollars <br/>FOR FREE, and probably 9 out of 10 Americans would hang up on me before <br/>I even told them what I was offering them. The point is, YOU CAN'T KNOW <br/>IF YOU ARE INTERESTED OR NOT UNTIL YOU'VE HEAR WHAT WE'RE OFFERING. <br/>TARD.<br/>- Last, but not least, NEVER ask for a a Telemarketer's HOME phone <br/>number. Honestly, you just look like a moron when you do. Do you really <br/>think that a Telemarketer has access to the internal systems required to <br/>set you up with whatever service they are offering from whatever company <br/>they are representing FROM THEIR OWN HOME? No, this would be a very <br/>suspicious thing, allowing people to work from home like that... In a <br/>professional company, the Telemarketers should be required to fully <br/>comply with the full security measures and confidentiality <br/>regulations... By asking for a Telemarketer's home phone number, you <br/>appear as someone who hasn't got a clue how a reputable business should <br/>be run, and you obviously thought you were being a smart ass, when you <br/>really were just a dumb ass.<br/><br/><br/>2003-07-27<br/>----------<br/><br/>So I turned 22 yesterday. Yay and all that. We ordered pizza and watched <br/>a couple movies. It was good. My dad even called me twice.<br/><br/>I've been working on a song a bit, trying to rekindle my love of <br/>creating music, but I'm struggling. I've been out of it for too long.<br/><br/>I'm working now, doing telemarketing. Not sure how long I'll be doing <br/>this stuff, because of many reasons... I could get fired, I might not be <br/>able to cope with the stress, I might get a job in my field... But at <br/>least it's money in the meantime.<br/><br/>My wife thinks it's amusing, but I seem to remember everyone's eye <br/>color... Well, not everyone, but almost everyone. I guess it is kinda <br/>weird.<br/><br/>Anyhow, I'm going back to write some lyrics and work on song structure <br/>now. Until next time...<br/><br/><br/>2003-07-18<br/>----------<br/><br/>I don't know what to do now. I could work in telemarketing, and possibly <br/>go mad in the process, or I could continue on my job search... I really <br/>want to work for Sony, but as my luck goes, I won't be chosen for that <br/>job. I need money soon. If I don't take the telemarketing job, I could <br/>never get one there again. I don't agree with telemarketing, and I can't <br/>see myself actually being able to do what they want you to do there. I <br/>just don't know what to do, what to say, or what to think... I'd be <br/>stupid to pass up a job, but what is the point of taking on a job that <br/>you are 99% sure you can't handle?<br/><br/>I have to make a decision soon. Decisions suck. Life sucks.<br/><br/><br/>2003-07-17<br/>----------<br/><br/>Watching movies has become my new hobby. And from that, I have the new <br/>hobby webpage, DOlson's Magical Fantastical Movie Reviews! Check it out<br/>at <a href="http://aslan.no-ip.com/">http://aslan.no-ip.com/</a><br/><br/>So my 22nd birthday is rapidly approaching, only nine days away, and<br/>I'm really hoping to be employed by then so we can go out for dinner. My <br/>wife had an interview today, as did I, and I have to go back tomorrow <br/>for a test and some paid training. Not sure when I'll know if I'm hired <br/>on there, but it's telemarketing... Something I'm not sure I could deal <br/>with for very long. I have my second interview at the Sony store on <br/>Sunday, and boy, do I hope that works out. I'd really love to work <br/>there.<br/><br/>00:10 < dolson> oh how I wish I was young again.<br/>00:10 < dolson> I bet you feel the same<br/>00:10 <@msphil> Can't remember what it was like.<br/><br/><br/>2003-07-07<br/>----------<br/><br/>I just discovered that two guys I used to jam with are living in the <br/>same city as me. That's pretty cool, considering one of them works where <br/>I've been applying. I'm going to contact the other guy tomorrow <br/>probably, and see what he's been up to. He's in a cool band now called <br/>Pinkslip, and they sound really cool. I hope I get to meet up with them <br/>again and jam a bit. Who knows, perhaps I'll get into a band myself <br/>again.<br/><br/><br/>2003-06-24<br/>----------<br/><br/>Home after another weekend visiting family... And getting an Xbox. I got a <br/>used one for about $100 cheaper than getting it new. Also, any games I get <br/>will be pre-owned as well, and this way, none of the stuff I buy will <br/>count as sales for Microsoft and co. And that's advice straight from the <br/>CEO of some Linux game publishing company too. It also saves money, since <br/>new games are bloody expensive.<br/><br/>I sold my copy of Win98SE along with some hardware, including a 15GB hard <br/>drive, a CD-ROM drive, and a USB graphics tablet, in order to pay for the <br/>Xbox... I got the DVD remote and an extra controller (both model S) with <br/>it, so it was a really good deal.<br/><br/>I've watched a few episodes of Family Guy on it, and life is good. I <br/>opened it up last night and put in a 30GB drive, and it was easy to set up <br/>and all that... The old 8GB is now in my PC, as secondary master, for <br/>backing up my documents and stuff. I still have my 80GB drive for my Linux <br/>(with 40GB partitioned for /usr/local/games).<br/><br/>My wife likes to play the old Super Mario games too, so it's actually won <br/>her favor, I think. And she seemed to like the looks of a few games at EB, <br/>such as Morrowind and stuff...<br/><br/>Interesting that, moreso than any other group of Windows users I can think <br/>of, Xbox users seem to be open to the idea of trying Linux. One guy on <br/>EFnet decided to give Debian a shot after I told him a little bit about <br/>apt-get... Every day or two he'll message me with questions, and I answer <br/>them to the best of my ability. He's not the only one, either. It seems to <br/>me that a lot of Xbox users are semi-literate when it comes to Linux. <br/>Maybe I'm dreaming, and perhaps that is the case in any IRC channel, but I <br/>don't remember it being like that before.<br/><br/>Anyhow.<br/><br/>Apologies to those of you who may have read this and hate me now.<br/><br/>In better news, job prospects at EB are looking fairly good, and if I get <br/>in, I'll see about getting some Linux games onto our shelves... Not sure <br/>how realistic that idea is, but hey, I can always try. I went in there <br/>today and was pimping Linux, Ryan, LGP, id, and so forth to the guy in <br/>there... He seemed impressed at the number of OSes that I've tried, and he <br/>himself seemed to have a bit of knowledge of Linux, BeOS, and FreeBSD <br/>even, so I may have been preaching to the choir...<br/><br/>My wife gets interviewed for a management position at some store later <br/>this week, so here's hoping that goes well... I applied to RadioShack and <br/>The Sony Store, and hoping that one of them (preferrably the later) will <br/>call me if EB doesn't do it first.<br/><br/>More job hunting to do tomorrow... Fun stuff.<br/><br/><br/>2003-06-11<br/>----------<br/><br/>Okay, so the trolls cleared out, yadda yadda.<br/><br/>Let me say, Metallica have proven to me that they do care about their<br/>fans more than people give them credit for. Their new album is MUCH<br/>better than their last two, comes with a free DVD, a cool case, and an<br/>access code to their file sharing site, Metallica Vault. Right now there<br/>are about 49 free songs to download, all of live concerts, and they will<br/>add more soon, and possibly even videos and stuff. This new album was<br/>well worth the $19.99 CAD I paid, and friends of mine paid only $12.99<br/>at Best Buy (wish we had one here).<br/><br/>I'm thinking of getting an Xbox as soon as I can afford it. Before you<br/>jump down my throat, realize that I don't really care as to why you think<br/>I shouldn't get one. I know the reasons why I shouldn't get one, as far<br/>as the rest of the world is concerned, but honestly, for the same price<br/>as a PS2, I don't think there is any better deal than an Xbox. I want<br/>it for playing NES, SNES, TG-16, Game Boy, and PSone games all with one<br/>box, one controller, and one power button. On top of that, and perhaps <br/>more importantly, I want it for media - DVD and DivX playback, coupled <br/>with Dolby Digital 5.1 support, I don't think there is any reason NOT to <br/>get an Xbox. Sure, tell me to go buy a PC or whatever. Just because you <br/>can't admit that Microsoft did something right for a change, doesn't mean <br/>I'm going to listen to you. There, I've said my peace.<br/><br/>So now I'm sharing a *gasp* Debian PC with my wife (she hates everything<br/>but Mandrake) because her motherboard decided to quit functioning. Just <br/>what we needed in the middle of a job search... Luckily, setting up her <br/>printer in Debian was easier than I thought (thanks ashridah for the <br/>inital help with CUPS). Our answering machine died with a message on it,<br/>then ressurrected itself a day later, but the message was gone. I *really*<br/>hope that wasn't a job offer...<br/><br/>Oh yeah, Gnome is getting better as the days go by, including Nautilus'<br/>script folder. Mmm... So nice, so nice...<br/><br/><br/>2003-05-22<br/>----------<br/><br/>I've decided I don't really like hanging out in the icculus.org channel<br/>anymore. Over the past week it has degerated into a troll breeding<br/>ground, and it's really just annoying as hell being in there.<br/><br/>Sure, some got kickbanned, but some are sitting on the borderline, not<br/>doing enough to get kicked, but enough to annoy the shit out of you.<br/><br/>Perhaps someday I'll check back in and see what's up. I don't know.<br/><br/><br/>2003-05-10<br/>----------<br/><br/>Decisions, decisions! Should I order a mod chip? Should I risk killing<br/>my over-the-counter-replacement warranty? Where should I order from<br/>that will ship to Canada quickly? Grr...<br/><br/>Oh yeah, I'm still looking for a job.<br/><br/><br/>2003-05-07<br/>----------<br/><br/>Ok. All settled here in North Bay now, and on the hunt for a job. If<br/>you want to hire me, email me. :)<br/><br/>Anyhow, this place is infinitely larger than my old apartment, and the<br/>air is clean and nice... The turtles needed a larger aquarium, so we got<br/>one that is three feet long... That oughtta do it for now.<br/><br/>So I wiped FreeBSD and put Gentoo on top of where it was... After 7<br/>hours of compiling everything, I had X and that's about it. Then it took<br/>a long LONG time to compile some things that I usually use all the time,<br/>such as Evolution, XChat, Gimp, Gaim, Quanta, and so on. And to top it<br/>all off, it's not even faster than Debian! Sure, bootup is a lot faster,<br/>and the fact that it compiles everything is cool, but uh, it takes way<br/>too long to maintain it, and OpenBox takes longer to start up than in<br/>Debian... And if you use OpenBox, you know that it *should* be hard to<br/>notice a difference in OpenBox's startup time. I guess it's a combination<br/>of X and OpenBox... In any case, I don't think I'll be switching to<br/>Gentoo at this point in time... But I haven't used it enough yet to make<br/>that decision. Stay tuned to my adventures. :)<br/><br/>Anyhow, yeah, did I mention I'm looking for work?<br/><br/><br/>2003-04-29<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, tomorrow is my last day in Toronto. Our new apartment is much<br/>larger, and I can't wait to get there. I hope my internet connection<br/>comes back online quickly once I'm there.<br/><br/>Also, today I invented a new recipe:<br/><br/>Beefy Cheese Fries<br/><br/>Cook up one pound of ground beef in a frying pan.<br/>Put a half a bag of fries in the oven to bake at about 450.<br/>Drain the beef and put it on top of the fries when they are ready.<br/>Grate a half-block of marble cheese, and load it on top while the fries<br/>and beef are still hot.<br/>Yummy!<br/><br/>Makes one serving.<br/><br/><br/>2003-04-20<br/>----------<br/><br/>I wrote an article for LinuxHardware.org about Linux gaming. They<br/>would like me to write more, so hopefully I will get to do some reviews<br/>of some cool hardware.<br/><br/><br/>2003-03-26<br/>----------<br/><br/>Okay, so some new stuff is going down with me.<br/><br/>Firstly, I got my preliminary marks back from my final semester of<br/>college, and although they aren't so hot, I didn't fail any of my<br/>classes, so I have no rewrites!! w00t. This means that shortly, I<br/>shall have a second college diploma:<br/> * Computer Network Engineering Technician<br/> * Computer Network Engineering Technologist<br/>That's a lot of good news.<br/><br/>Next, BioWare finally released a beta of Neverwinter Nights! It<br/>runs pretty well on my Debian system, and I've filed 4 bug reports<br/>so far. On my wife's Mandrake system, it was running fine. This<br/>brings me to the third update:<br/><br/>Mandrake released version 9.1 of their distro. I'm sick of hearing<br/>all the "boycott teh french! boycott teh Manbrake Lunix!!11" crap<br/>on Slashdot and other various places... Mandrake 9.1 is easily<br/>the best distro there is right now. Unless you like multiple-hour<br/>installation processes (in which case, I recommend Debian or<br/>Slackware), give Mandrake a shot. The speed amazed me, and as much<br/>as it is tempting me to install it, I just love apt too much. I<br/>can't ditch Debian, as it is easy to upgrade - the only thing<br/>that Mandrake really lacks. I started to go through the 9.0 -> 9.1<br/>upgrade process, but I hit reset halfway through. It just felt too<br/>much like I was wasting my time.<br/><br/>Now, if Mandrake 9.1 would just co-operate with ravage's installer,<br/>or if it would at least play NWN without crashing, I'd be euphoric.<br/><br/><br/>2003-03-19<br/>----------<br/><br/>I decided that I hate personal attacks on IRC when I'm trying to discus<br/>something seriously.<br/><br/><kodgehopper> dolson: captain of the debate team?<br/><chandler> alright. I said cut it out.<br/><kodgehopper> okokok<br/><kodgehopper> no more hitting below the belt :))<br/><wolfman8k> dude u suck<br/>* kodgehopper takes a bow<br/>* dolson kicks kodgehopper in the face while he's bowing<br/><dolson> He was gonna suck my dick, so I had to do a preemptive strike<br/>--- ChanServ sets modes [#politics +o chandler]<br/>--- chandler sets modes [#politics +q dolson!*@*]<br/><br/>Now, I have no frickin' clue what t
.plan update from dolson, 2006-09-19 11:45:33
https://icculus.org/finger/dolson?date=2006-09-19&time=11-45-33
Tue, 19 Sep 2006 11:45:33 -0400
--------------------Chunky-Kibbles-Measure-Line-------------------------<br/><br/>Current Projects and Websites<br/>-----------------------------<br/>> <a href="http://www.rivironline.com/">http://www.rivironline.com/</a> (This is music I create myself as RIVIR)<br/>> <a href="http://www.ubuntustudio.com/">http://www.ubuntustudio.com/</a> (This is my wiki for Ubuntu musicians)<br/>> <a href="http://icculus.org/~dolson/wishlist">http://icculus.org/~dolson/wishlist</a> (my wishlist)<br/>> <a href="http://www.scapegoatsoftware.com/">http://www.scapegoatsoftware.com/</a> (This is my programming site)<br/>> <a href="http://gimpdesk.tk/">http://gimpdesk.tk/</a> (This is gimps by me and my ex-co-workers)<br/>> <a href="http://aslan.homelinux.com/dana/movies/">http://aslan.homelinux.com/dana/movies/</a> (My mini movie review site)<br/><br/><br/>2006-09-19<br/>----------<br/><br/>Three months and no update... So much has happened.<br/><br/>Firstly, I don't know what the deal with lilo and diablo-d3 was, and I<br/>don't care. lilo is gone, and that is shitty. My condolences to his<br/>family.<br/><br/>Next up, the Wii has be very excited. I hope to get one at launch.<br/><br/>Also, I have been learning a lot about how to do music with Linux.<br/>This is fun and exciting in it's own right. I will be re-doing all<br/>of my songs in software now, and it's gonna be interesting, if<br/>tedious.<br/><br/>Finally, October will see me travelling to my old city of Toronto to<br/>check out Iron freakin' Maiden! It's been a long time coming. I am<br/>so glad I didn't buy Alice Cooper tickets, even though he's in my city<br/>next month. This is a much better opportunity because although I love<br/>and respect Alice, Iron Maiden has been a much larger influence on me,<br/>musically, and they put on an amazing show, by all accounts. I can't<br/>wait, and my wife is even more stoked than I am.<br/><br/><br/>2006-06-19<br/>----------<br/><br/>There's no such thing as hockey...<br/>There's no such thing as hockey...<br/>There's no such thing as hockey...<br/><br/><br/>2006-06-05<br/>----------<br/><br/>And so it begins.<br/><br/>I really hope that Edmonton can get done what no other Canadian team has <br/>done in recent decades... Take home the Stanley Cup to where it belongs! <br/>Canada. I expect to be disappointed, but there is always hope.<br/><br/><br/>2006-05-26<br/>----------<br/><br/>Now that Google has "ported" Picasa to Linux, I guess everyone can stop <br/>saying that Wine doesn't ruin chances for native ports. It is true <br/>that companies would rather use Wine than put any effort into properly <br/>supporting Linux long-term. Hell, Google didn't even use Winelib, they <br/>used Wine itself! Sure, they contributed some code back to Wine, which <br/>only helps advance Wine. If this keeps happening, it just makes me <br/>wonder why even bother running Linux instead of Windows? Thank <br/>God for F-Spot and other open-source software. Thank God.<br/><br/>F-Spot doesn't look like ass either, like the Win32 app that Picasa is.<br/><br/><br/>2006-05-14<br/>----------<br/><br/>For once, I will do what Sony and Microsoft want me to do. And that is <br/>NOT to buy their products, but instead to buy Nintendo's product.<br/><br/><a href="http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2006-05-11T132519Z_01_N10243836_RTRUKOC_0_US-EXPO-MICROSOFT.xml">http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2006-05-11T132519Z_01_N10243836_RTRUKOC_0_US-EXPO-MICROSOFT.xml</a><br/><a href="http://www.thewiire.com/news/312/1/Sony_Executive_Recommends_Wii_As_Second_Console">http://www.thewiire.com/news/312/1/Sony_Executive_Recommends_Wii_As_Second_Console</a><br/><br/>Hey, if I can't decide which console to buy, I'll just look at what all <br/>three companies are saying to decide.<br/><br/><Microsot> Buy the Wii! It's cool!<br/><Sony> We recommend you get a Wii!<br/><Nintendo> What they said!<br/><Me> Wii it is!<br/><br/><br/>2006-05-09<br/>----------<br/><br/>$500 for a lite PS3? WTF are they smoking? I know for sure now that I <br/>won't be getting one for a long, long time.<br/><br/>Let's hope Nintendo's conference reports the launch date and price, and <br/>that the price is low... $200 or under would have me in the lineups on <br/>release day.<br/><br/><br/>2006-05-05<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, I just finished my first full work week in my new position as a <br/>Perl programmer. After five days, I went from knowing nothing about Perl <br/>outside of what it does, to being able to code some applications, use <br/>modules, read and write to PostgreSQL databases (which I have also never <br/>previously dealt with), and send email. I learned a lot of it on my own <br/>by reading and experimenting, but a large credit goes to the simple, <br/>to-the-point help that I have been given by my fellow programmer who <br/>sits a few feet away from me. I'm well on the road to becoming a real <br/>Perl programmer.<br/><br/>And let me just say that I have been blessed with an awesome work place, <br/>awesome co-workers, and an awesome company. My friends who have moved on <br/>from our last place of employment also claim their new companies are <br/>great, so I am thinking that my previous employer was the exception <br/>rather than the rule, when it comes to employee treatment, business <br/>practices, and employee hiring standards.<br/><br/>There is a cut in pay compared to my last position of around $8600, <br/>which sucks, but I am much happier here, I am not tethered to a <br/>company-issued cell phone, forced to be on-call 24/7, I am not in shift <br/>work, I don't work weekends, etc. I can bring my bike right into the <br/>office and put it into the back room during the day, and the ride there <br/>is only about 10 minutes, 15 if I pedal very leisurely.<br/><br/>A brand new 64-bit system is sitting at my desk - oh yes, it's a desk, <br/>not a cubicle - with an LCD monitor. On top of that, today a co-worker <br/>any I took a trip to Staples and picked out a nice keyboard with more <br/>features than I needed, and a new pointing device - a Logitech optical <br/>trackball, because I prefer to not use mice, as they tend to be too <br/>small for my hands and my pinky and ring fingers cramp.<br/><br/>This morning I got to work, and there was a large Tim Horton's coffee <br/>sitting on my desk, with my name on it. That sort of thing just didn't <br/>happen before, but here this is an almost daily phenomenon - and there <br/>is a stack of paper coffee cup trays in the corner of the room that <br/>reaches the ceiling to prove it.<br/><br/>To top it off, I was informed that at the end of every month, the <br/>company buys pizza for us. So that is awesome, as pizza is my favorite <br/>food. My last place did buy us pizza occasionally, but once they were <br/>bought by that company in Pakistan, those rare occasions seemed to have <br/>stopped. For us in Canada, anyhow.<br/><br/>This new place I am working at is everything that I'm about. They do <br/>webhosting, they are an ISP, a CLEC, they do VoIP with Asterisk, and a <br/>big portion of it is running on Linux, which is fantastic. I don't think <br/>there are any SCO UNIX boxes kicking around either, something I hated at <br/>the last place. I'm even allowed - forced, actually - to run Linux on my <br/>workstation; whichever distro I want. Of course, I put Ubuntu, but <br/>would've been happy even with the company standard of debian.<br/><br/>I've been accepted and welcomed to the company with open arms by <br/>everyone, and it's much less hostile an environment, but things still <br/>seem to get done! The developers actually do come into the office, and <br/>they actually do work. Fathom that! Everyone in the company, which spans <br/>numerous cities, is accessible by 4-digit extensions, so I can quickly <br/>memorize these, as opposed to memorizing many 10-digit numbers over <br/>multiple cities in multiple countries. Yes, everything seems to be much <br/>improved over the previous job.<br/><br/>So, as my previous supervisor, on my final day with the company, had <br/>mentioned it might be, being laid off was definitely a blessing in <br/>disguise. Even after four and a half months of sitting on my couch with <br/>no clue what the future held, collecting government money to attempt to <br/>make ends meet.<br/><br/>Now I don't have to move to another city, I don't have to keep sending <br/>out or delivering resumes and hoping for callbacks, nor do I have to <br/>worry about stress from feeling like a worthless non-contributor to our <br/>household. Now I can stay here where I have a doctor, friends, family, <br/>and a good church. Thank God!<br/><br/>To get onto another topic, E3 starts very soon, and I'm excited as all <br/>getup to see what Nintendo has in store!<br/><br/>That is all for now. :)<br/><br/><br/>2006-04-28<br/>----------<br/><br/>So, just over a month after being rejected by the job I said I wanted as <br/>a Perl developer, I got an unexpected call back, with an offer for the <br/>job. So I start on Monday. I also have been having some weird feelings <br/>in my left side of my throat, so hopefully my doctor listens to me.<br/><br/>I'm excited to get my hands on my Wii! The games that are coming out <br/>will be awesome, and I read an interview with someone from EA, and it <br/>was very interesting to hear about the new Madden. I'm not one for <br/>football, but I think I might try it this time around. EA has a studio <br/>dedicated to the Wii, so that's pretty cool. I am really excited about a <br/>Fight Night game, especially if the attachment also has gyros to detect <br/>motion. That would ROCK.<br/><br/><br/>2006-04-09<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, yesterday I figured out how to cross-compile again in Linux, for <br/>Windows. So that's good, because there is a new project I'm working on <br/>and it will need to run on Windows as well. I'll put more details here <br/>when something is ready for release.<br/><br/><br/>2006-03-19<br/>----------<br/><br/>So, I got an email from Mark Shuttleworth, and there will be a new <br/>Ubuntu derivative distro for multimedia use. He said he'll give me more <br/>details this week. I really hope that it is all in the repos and is <br/>official, and can be installed with apt-get install mubuntu (I assume it <br/>will be called Mubuntu, based on the domain registration).<br/><br/><br/>2006-03-16<br/>----------<br/><br/>I had a job interview today at an ISP/host/CLEC/VoIP/everything company. <br/>The position is for a Jr. Perl developer. I don't know Perl, but I <br/>started looking at it, and it doesn't look like it would take me long to <br/>pick it up. I'm pretty good at that sort of thing, and if I can do PHP <br/>and some C/C++ stuff, I'm sure Perl can't be that hard.<br/><br/>I really want that job. The guys seem really nice, the company seems <br/>stable, and best of all, the programmers use Debian!<br/><br/>I am ashamed that I messed up though. I didn't have my references on me <br/>because I asked a few people for advice, and they said to not bring <br/>anything with me. So I sent them my references through email, but I had <br/>an error on the page. One of my references' job title and employer were <br/>wrong... So I corrected it and sent it in. I hope they don't disqualify <br/>me because of that error. I only corrected it because I am honest and <br/>would not want to get a job by lying. For instance, some of my friends <br/>suggested I just not correct it - they'll never notice! they say. It <br/>would be easy enough to call up my reference and tell him of my error, <br/>and ask him to play it up. But dishonesty isn't the best policy, I <br/>think. So I really, really hope they realize this.<br/><br/>I'll post another update when I find out if I got the job or not... Time <br/>to go read some Perl docs. :)<br/><br/><br/>2006-01-31<br/>----------<br/><br/>Still no job. And ZERO sales of my CD. That's great. Life is so awesome.<br/><br/>I am working on a website for Ubuntu users, namely musicians, who want <br/>to use Ubuntu as a recording studio. You could check it out and <br/>contribute at www.ubuntustudio.com. I've spent one full week on it so <br/>far, and have had very little help.<br/><br/>I've also been talking with some guys from Canonical/Ubuntu and I have <br/>contacted Free from DeMuDi, with regards to getting Ubuntu to the point <br/>where it should be for musicians. This means we need an experimental <br/>kernel patch (obviously not in the main kernel tree for Ubuntu) as an <br/>option, as well as some software that is missing. Any real progress with <br/>this will be notated on my site.<br/><br/><br/>2005-12-05<br/>----------<br/><br/>I have finally put together my demo CD. It's called, "The Demo" and you <br/>can get it for $6.99 Real Money from www.cafepress.com/rivir - also, get <br/>yourself a thong while you're at it!<br/><br/>Only 11 more days left of my current job. Because I was laid off. Along <br/>with 5 others. Basically, our company is being offshored to Pakistan, <br/>the Philippines, Brazil or something like that, and France. Great.<br/><br/>In other news, I've recorded a Christmas song for a compilation that <br/>will also be sold through CafePress shortly. <br/><a href="http://www.cafepress.com/xmascomp">http://www.cafepress.com/xmascomp</a> will be the URL to buy it if you like.<br/><br/><br/>2005-11-16<br/>----------<br/><br/>It appears that the new Xbox 360's power supply is housed in an original <br/>Xbox. I was gonna get an Xbox 360, but I need to build an addition onto <br/>my house just for the power supply:<br/><br/><a href="http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/system/microsoft/xbox360/bundle.jpg">http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/system/microsoft/xbox360/bundle.jpg</a><br/><br/><br/>2005-05-08<br/>----------<br/><br/>I went to Toronto yesterday and ended up coming home with a new Roland <br/>TD-3KV electronic drum kit. Pretty cool stuff.<br/><br/><br/>2005-04-16<br/>----------<br/><br/>Here are most of the remaining mini-reviews. There are one or two that I <br/>haven't got to yet though. I'll add them later on.<br/><br/>Wyrick - Mental Floss<br/>Travis Wyrick is pretty cool, from everything I've heard to date. He did <br/>some good work on Gretchen's disc too. But, I can't help but wonder if <br/>his blatant rip offs of Trent Reznor go unnoticed... Have a listen to <br/>Sacrifice and compare to NIN's The Perfect Drug. I see similarities. But <br/>even worse, is a track that's not on Mental Floss, called More of You. <br/>If you can check that out, compare it to NIN's song Wish, and tell me <br/>that it's not lifted material... Anyhow, all that aside, I really like <br/>Wyrick, and even like those songs too. And hey, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe <br/>Travis came up with those melodys and chord progressions on his own <br/>without ever hearing the NIN songs. But somehow I doubt it, as even the <br/>other material reminds me of other bands/songs, but I can't place them <br/>all.<br/><br/>Grammatrain - Lonely House<br/>I knew most of the songs on this disc from MP3s I had from AudioGalaxy's <br/>free days. The main difference is that these are not live versions, so <br/>they sound a lot better. Some songs remind me of bands like Silverchair <br/>(specifically the track Execution). I don't mind these guys, but they <br/>aren't going to get tons of play in my CD player, at least not when I <br/>have CDs from bands like [null factor] and Oil.<br/><br/>Oil - Refine<br/>Wow! Awesome metal band. After hearing only the first track, I knew that <br/>they were closing in on Megadeth for my favorite metal band, and my wife <br/>said ealy on in the disc that she liked them more than Metallica (I keep <br/>telling her Metallica blows, but she doesn't listen). Anyhow, if you <br/>like metal, check out Oil. Sadly they've disbanded, but this disc is <br/>still worth getting. Global Warning is great too.<br/><br/>Ultimatum - Puppet of Destruction<br/>I'm not sure why I ordered this. I guess I was hoping for some great <br/>metal, but I should've checked out some samples or something first, <br/>because I can't stand the vocals. The drums and bass could use a lot of <br/>low-end boost. Maybe they'll grow on me, I dunno.<br/><br/>Torn Skin - Violence and Technology<br/>I love the guitars in this disc. They just sound really cool. Same goes <br/>with samples, a soft spot. Some of this reminded me of NIN. I have to <br/>listen to it a lot more for it to grow on me totally, but I like the <br/>Remote Control tracks the best so far. The unlisted track is kinda <br/>strange, but nice.<br/><br/>Autovoice - A Living Death<br/>I was not real impressed with some of the vocals on this disc. The <br/>second track has a real loud and obnoxious sound, which would appear to <br/>be a snare drum sound. It reappears on other tracks, such as Fallout. <br/>I'm sorry, but snare drums should not overpower the entire mix like <br/>this, no matter how radical a sound you're trying to go for. I try to <br/>like it, but in the end, it just causes me to skip the remainder of the <br/>track. The distorted-sounding vocals that appear throughout the album <br/>sound too quiet to me. I bought this because someone likened them to <br/>Skinny Puppy. It's maybe more like Skinny Puppy if they had the guy from <br/>Cybershadow or something guest singing, and if they used a rapid-fire <br/>shotgun for a snare drum. If it weren't for the mis-matched sound <br/>levels, I could probably get past the vocals and really get into this <br/>disc, but as it is, it's not real fun to listen to for me.<br/><br/>Feezel - Life Moves On<br/>Described as a "nastier-edged Megadeth," if you've heard this disc, you <br/>could understand my frustration and disappointment with that <br/>description. They're more like a heavy rock band, and not so much metal. <br/>The vocals sound pretty good, and the disc is mostly enjoyable, as long <br/>as you skip over the Church as Usual track. For some reason, I think <br/>that people who like Pillar may like these guys.<br/><br/>[null factor] - Purity<br/>I figured I'd love this disc right from the first moments of the opening <br/>track. I was right. Pretty much every track has a great underlying beat, <br/>great vocals, and overall, it's very danceable music (not that I dance, <br/>heh, nobody wants to see that). The Jagged Doctrine mix of Critical is a <br/>treat that has a very different sound compared to the rest of the disc. <br/>My favorite track so far is the opening cut, but this is becoming a <br/>favorite disc of mine quickly.<br/><br/>Symbiotica<br/>Very relaxing, female vocals on a bed of soft synth sounds with assorted <br/>other sounds and percussion. I like the sound of Wilderness Call, with <br/>that singing and percussive beat the best, but some songs are a bit too <br/>happy-sounding for my tastes. In fact, the entire CD is kinda out of my <br/>range, but if I ever need to fall asleep, and fast, I'll pop this disc <br/>in.<br/><br/>The Way Sect Bloom - Effloresce<br/>I knew of these guys from the Electro Shock Therapy comp, and I'm glad I <br/>finally ordered their disc. The song Washed reminds me highly of Circle <br/>of Dust, and this is no shock, considering Klayton worked on this disc, <br/>and I think this song in particular.<br/><br/>Elder - Plagues, Woes<br/>I bought this, and now, not even a week after it arrived, the price was <br/>cut in half! This just burns me up! I'm outraged! I could've paid only <br/>50 cents for this disc, but no, they ripped me! Oh well, at least it's <br/>almost decent for a grunge band. Some songs feel out of place, like <br/>River, and lyrics like those on Down the Stairs seem kinda silly. Some <br/>of the disc sounds repetitive, but hey, it's grunge. Some songs stand <br/>out, unlike Wish for Eden's Pet the Fish disc, but still, they're few <br/>and far between.<br/><br/><br/>2005-04-12<br/>----------<br/><br/>More CDs came in today.<br/><br/>Sometime Sunday - Drain<br/>Very cool grungy type stuff. Sounds similar to Soundgarden and the like. <br/>I like this album so far.<br/><br/>Wish for Eden - Pet the Fish<br/>This album is comprised of 10 identical tracks. Or at least that was <br/>what I thought... Upon further examination, apparently the songs have <br/>different lyrics.<br/><br/>Fell Venus - @<br/>Some pretty strange singing on this album. I don't really know why I got <br/>rid of the first copy of it that I owned, but some songs can get on your <br/>nerves. Nevermind the weird track numbering.<br/><br/>Mortal - Nu En Jin<br/>This is much better vocals than the previous Mortal albums I've <br/>heard, even though I didn't mind some of their older stuff, in <br/>moderation. This is a great change, and totally different than Wake, <br/>which was kinda sore-thumbish for them.<br/><br/><br/>2005-04-09<br/>----------<br/><br/>Ever<br/>Wow! Amazing stuff here. I got goosebumps listening to some of it... <br/>Also, they sent me two copies of the CD - one of them was signed too. <br/>I'm not sure if the second copy was a mistake or what, so I'm gonna <br/>email them about it.<br/><br/>Virgin Black - Elegant... and Dying<br/>Very nice. I've always loved them since the first time I heard their <br/>stuff, way before AudioGalaxy was turned into a pay service. I own <br/>Sombre Romantic and Trance discs, and now this. All are masterpieces. I <br/>really love listening to their music. I did notice that the track times <br/>listed on the back are sometimes shorter than the tracks on the disc. <br/>That's kinda strange.<br/><br/>Generation - Brutal Reality<br/>Very cool sounding industrial metal hybrid. I like the samples they use, <br/>and the vocals are cool. I am glad I gambled on this one.<br/><br/><br/>2005-04-08<br/>----------<br/><br/>Some CDs are in. Below are the first few reviews.<br/><br/>Global Warning - Enemy Within<br/>A great metal album... The singer has a good sound for his vocals... <br/>Kinda reminds me a bit of Jon from Korn crossed with James from <br/>Metallica, with a touch of Dale from Bride for vocals, coupled with a <br/>cross between Titanic, Virgin Black, Metallica for the music. Others <br/>might compare them to Disturbed or Godsmack or POD, based on what I've <br/>read. Anyhow, great band, they have clips on their site. If you like <br/>metal at all, check out the clips at least.<br/><br/>Judean Radiostatic - Flux<br/>Nice sound. I like the samples used in the first track... Something I <br/>really miss in a lot of the Christian music I listen to. Sometimes the <br/>vocals reminded me of Skinny Puppy and sometimes a bit of Marilyn <br/>Manson. The occasional female vocals are nice too.<br/><br/>dead turns alive - Salvation and Despair<br/>Some more samples, which are great, and some really good tracks. Some of <br/>them I didn't like as much, as they sounded too technoy. My favorite <br/>track is definitely Influence, which you can get a live video of on <br/>their website. I have to listen to it more for it to grow on me, because <br/>a few of the songs were disappointing, but I'm sure that'll change.<br/><br/>Gretchen - In the Mean Time<br/>I was pleasantly surprised that I liked most of the songs on this album, <br/>as I was expecting it to be like No Doubt. The CD has tons of extras <br/>too, such as the entire album pre-ripped to 128Kbps MP3s, wallpapers, <br/>icons, videos, lyrics... Very cool batch of extras, and thankfully it's <br/>not all embedded into a single file... So then I can view it all in <br/>Linux. Anyhow, it's a good female-fronted rock band, and a song or to <br/>reminds me a tiny bit of Evanescence, but more rockish. No piano.<br/><br/>Fatal Blast Whip - Constellation<br/>The soothing sounds of this album put me to sleep. I'll have to listen <br/>to it again. I like the sound of the vocals for sure. Very nice. I'll <br/>give it another listen when I'm more awake.<br/><br/>I love them all so far, but my favorites are Global Warning and <br/>Gretchen. Well... Each album has a few tracks that are awesome... I <br/>guess I just like them all.<br/><br/><br/>2005-03-31<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, I just decided that I'm sick of crappily-named MP3 files. So I did <br/>a quick search of my APT repositories, and I discovered EasyTAG. Wow! I <br/>sure wish I didn't procrastinate in searching for a decent MP3 file <br/>renamer/ID3 tag editor. It's sweet. If you're looking for one, check it <br/>out. No, I'm not with them. I can't hardly code yet.<br/><br/><br/>2005-03-27<br/>----------<br/><br/>I modded an Xbox yesterday and upgraded hard drives in two Xboxes. This <br/>means I had cash to spend. And I decided to buy me a whole new musical <br/>library. Here are the two dozen discs I am expecting in the coming <br/>weeks. I'll try posting a review here of each album as I listen to them, <br/>if I remember.<br/><br/>Autovoice - Living Death<br/>Dead Turns Alive - Salvation and Despair<br/>Elder - Plagues and Woes<br/>Ever<br/>Feezel - Life Moves On<br/>Fell Venus - @<br/>Generation - Brutal Reality<br/>Global Warning - Enemy Within<br/>Grammatrain - Lonely House<br/>Gretchen - In the Mean Time<br/>Jagged Doctrine - Absolution<br/>Judean Radio Static - Flux<br/>Mortal - Nu En Jin<br/>Null Factor - Purity<br/>Oil - Refine<br/>Sometime Sunday - Drain<br/>Symbiotica<br/>Torn Skin - Violence & Technology<br/>Ultimatum - Puppet Of Destruction<br/>Virgin Black - Elegant and Dying<br/>Way Sect Bloom - Effloresce<br/>Wish For Eden - Pet the Fish<br/>Wyrick - Mental Floss<br/>Yonderboy - Mission Of Mercy<br/><br/><br/>2005-03-05<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, so far on this new job I haven't really used Asterisk yet.<br/><br/>I've been learning a lot of stuff about SIP and general telecom. Well, <br/>not so much learning new telecom stuff as remembering stuff from <br/>college. Anyhow, I've been using iptel.org's SER software on Debian, <br/>which is great. Who ever thought that I'd get to set up Linux at this <br/>company, and get paid to do it?<br/><br/>Well, nothing really new. I did put Ubuntu on my laptop and my desktop. <br/>So far I'm impressed with it. It's user-friendly, but not in the same <br/>way that Mandrake et al are. Ubuntu does things nicely, whereas <br/>Mandrake's tools, or whoever else you want to compare to, tend to get in <br/>the way. Moving from Debian to Ubuntu, was it a good change? I can't <br/>tell you that yet, but so far it seems great. I'd like to see this <br/>distro raise to the top of the pack. There are a lot of names working on <br/>it - Jeff Waugh, Daniel Stone, etc. It's impressive so far, anyhow.<br/><br/><br/>2005-01-31<br/>----------<br/><br/>Today marks the beginning of the second week of my new job as a Jr. <br/>Telecom Technician. That's a fancy title for "Asterisk/Linux Research <br/>and Development." This is supposed to last 6 months, but might run <br/>longer/permanently if the company decides to move this into production.<br/><br/><br/>2005-01-12<br/>----------<br/><br/>This Christmas I got money, plus I sold a bunch of old gear. Now I have <br/>spent close to $900-$1000 on music gear. This is insane! Oh yeah, and my <br/>RM1x came in and it was severely beaten.<br/><a href="http://icculus.org/~dolson/rm1x.html">http://icculus.org/~dolson/rm1x.html</a><br/><br/><br/>2004-12-20<br/>----------<br/><br/>Jim Gaffigan is a funny comic. Check him out if you're interested and <br/>haven't heard of him yet. I wouldn't plug his website <br/>(jimgaffigan.com) in my .plan or anything like that, because that's not <br/>me. Besides, I'm sure you could find his website (jimgaffigan.com) on a <br/>search engine if you wanted to go to his website (jimgaffigan.com).<br/><br/><br/>2004-12-09<br/>----------<br/><br/>Darrell Abbott, aka Dimebag Darrell, is dead. It is a sad, sad day.<br/><br/>Just yesterday I was in the mall, holding a Damageplan CD in my hands, <br/>wondering what the ex-Pantera members were up to these days... And then <br/>last night, this happened.<br/><br/>He, along with four others were murdered before a lone police officer <br/>showed up and took down the killer with a shotgun blast to the face.<br/><br/>Darrell was an amazing guitarist. I was glad to see the tributes on <br/>Megadeth.com, Anthrax.com, ZakkWylde.com, and Sepultura.com.br. Very <br/>classy for these musicians to show their respect for this loss.<br/><br/>I sure hope that a rash of copy-cat murders do not break out, but <br/>wouldn't be surprised.<br/><br/><br/>2004-12-08<br/>----------<br/><br/>I just discovered jbidwatcher. Sweet, open-source goodness. For a Java <br/>program, it sure isn't bad. It could be worse.<br/><br/>Hopefully this will help me win a Groovebox for cheap.<br/><br/><br/>2004-12-04<br/>----------<br/><br/>If anyone has any used Grooveboxes, let me know... I'm this -| |- close <br/>to buying one off eBay.<br/><br/><a href="http://icculus.org/~dolson/wishlist">http://icculus.org/~dolson/wishlist</a> (I'll be adding to this soon)<br/><br/><br/>2004-11-17<br/>----------<br/><br/>Holy crap, Megadeth rocked! That is all.<br/><br/><br/>2004-11-11<br/>----------<br/><br/>I am SOOO hooked on getting a Groovebox. If anyone has one or knows a <br/>good cheap place to get one, LET ME KNOW! I'll probably get a Roland <br/>MC-303 to start, but right now I've got a MC-505 on loan for a week... <br/>Trying to not get too stuck to it, but it's gonna be hard.<br/><br/>I didn't get to go to Skinny Puppy yesterday. That sucked. But I'm <br/>counting on them touring again... Here's hoping.<br/><br/>I'm going through all the crap I have and trying to find stuff to sell. <br/>I'll list some things here and on eBay.<br/><br/><br/>2004-10-27<br/>----------<br/><br/>I'm totally against it and offended by it. I'm going out to let my real <br/>talent show, not to just stand there and dance around. Personally, I'd <br/>never lip-synch. It's just not me. -- Ashlee Simpson, Lucky Magazine<br/><br/><br/>2004-10-26<br/>----------<br/><br/>Just bought tickets to Megadeth today. I can't wait to go! Still looking <br/>for a ride to Skinny Puppy too.<br/><br/>I move to a house in 3 days, so this is pretty sweet. We're packing and <br/>stuff, and it's coming along.<br/><br/><br/>2004-10-19<br/>----------<br/><br/>I packed my Xbox away. Moving in two weeks and I haven't touched it <br/>since I got Zelda anyhow.<br/><br/>I got a USB CF card reader today. Read about it here: <br/><a href="http://icculus.org/~dolson/centrioscfreader.html">http://icculus.org/~dolson/centrioscfreader.html</a><br/><br/>Nothing else really new. I'm about to eat my 6th Big Mac of the day.<br/><br/><br/>2004-10-10<br/>----------<br/><br/>A little while back, at the end of September, I got a Gamecube. I didn't <br/>have to pay a dime for it either. I simply traded some old Windows games <br/>for it. Who do you think got the better deal?<br/><br/>I got: Gamecube, cables, controller, MadCatz controller, Super Mario <br/>Sunshine, Memory Card 59, Super Smash Bros. Melee, and Memory Card 16x.<br/><br/>He got: Gettysburg, Populous 3, Starsiege, GTA2, Red Alert, Sanitarium, <br/>Summoner, Nox, Clue (from a cereal box), Fallout, and Aquanox (tossed in <br/>as a freebie as I had two copies anyhow).<br/><br/>The verdict? I think considering I don't run Windows, I got a fantastic <br/>deal. Even if I did run Windows, it's hard to beat this swap.<br/><br/>So now I've forgotten all about Fable and my Xbox in general... I've <br/>been playing Zelda on the 'cube whenever I've had time away from working <br/>on osCommerce and osTickets for my business site that I'm starting up.<br/><br/>If you haven't taken our quick survey, please do.<br/><br/>I'm not very far in Zelda yet. I'm just on my way to Dragon's Roost or <br/>whatever it's called. My wife is playing it right now, and she was stuck <br/>at the three statues, so she asked me to catch up and figure it out, so <br/>I did, then I saved and passed the controller over to her for her to <br/>play. Heh. She didn't realize she could grab the statue and pull it <br/>forward. :)<br/><br/><br/>2004-10-03<br/>----------<br/><br/><a href="http://www.clickycart.com/survey/">http://www.clickycart.com/survey/</a> <-- please do that if you haven't <br/>already. I'm going to start up an online store, and I wanna know what <br/>sorts of things people buy and what they use to pay with. Thanks!<br/><br/>23:54 < mousematt> whats the weather like where u are today?<br/>23:55 < dolson> according to my Gnome applet, it's 9 Celcius and cloudy<br/><br/><br/>2004-09-18<br/>----------<br/><br/>I'm about to try out Fable. I wonder if it'll be good or if it'll <br/>suck...<br/><br/>Well, if it sucks, I can always go listen to the Megadeth album.<br/><br/><br/>2004-09-14<br/>----------<br/><br/>Megadeth's new album rules.<br/><br/><br/>2004-09-12<br/>----------<br/><br/>I just downloaded a video from Megadeth's new album, which was shown on <br/>MTV2, and I was confused... I thought my sound card was dying. Then I <br/>thought that the video was a bad quality TV rip. Then I realized that <br/>MTV bleeps out the words "death" and "high." I could almost, ALMOST, <br/>understand bleeping "high" if the verse referred to drugs, but it <br/>doesn't - the verse is "I can't kick high enough."<br/><br/>This is truly stupid.<br/><br/><br/>2004-08-22<br/>----------<br/>The house is ours.<br/><br/>Someone ported my BattlePong to Xbox! Haha. Here's a link: <br/><a href="http://xhomebrew.netfirms.com/battlepong.shtml">http://xhomebrew.netfirms.com/battlepong.shtml</a> I found out by accident <br/>while checking out an FTP server for a new dashboard. Crazy.<br/><br/><br/>2004-08-20<br/>----------<br/>So today was the inspection for the house we are most likely buying. <br/>Insurance said they would insure the house, our mortgage was approved, <br/>and nothing super major showed up in the inspection report. We'll be <br/>moving in on Nov. 1st, assuming we decide to go ahead and the lawyer <br/>doesn't find any legal issues.<br/><br/>Yesterday the inspector sent over the contract to me in Word .doc <br/>format, and I had asked if he had an alternative format, even a PDF so I <br/>could print it out and he said he didn't. Well, today he came to my <br/>apartment to get his check, and he said "so, you run Linux then?" and <br/>just totally opened himself up for me to lay the smack down. He asked a <br/>couple more questions, and I mentioned that I don't generally worry <br/>about security, viruses, spyware, and so on and explained why. He asked <br/>if it was hard to use, and I asked if he had seen it before. He hadn't. <br/>And now he has... I sat him down in front of my PC and showed him what <br/>his contract looked like in OpenOffice.org, as the formatting is <br/>slightly off. I showed him Evolution. I showed him FireFox and mentioned <br/>that CERT recommended ditching IE for the time being, and that FireFox <br/>works on Windows too. I showed him some different themes for Gnome, and <br/>he seemed impressed. He asked how hard it was to set up. I started <br/>explaining that some hardware might not work, his handheld, printer, and <br/>proprietary software might not work, and so on. I was just being honest <br/>about it. He said "that's alright, I could probably run Linux on my home <br/>network and it'd be fine." So, who knows? Maybe it's the start of <br/>something. :) I just emailed him the links to Gnoppix and Knoppix as he <br/>requested when I mentioned these distros, and I also included a lot of <br/>other info, and offered assistance if he wanted it.<br/><br/>This really does feel like a religion and like I just got someone saved. <br/>It's sorta scary.<br/><br/><br/>2004-07-10<br/>----------<br/>I just had to write a note here about how I am feeling right now... <br/>Megadeth is such a great band. Dave Mustaine is one of the coolest <br/>musicians when it comes to being cool with his fans. He posts on the <br/>Megadeth forums, he releases MP3s occasionally, and everything. If <br/>you're a fan, and you didn't know, he's releasing a new album in <br/>September, called The System Has Failed, and he's also releasing all of <br/>the previous records (except KIMB, since it's done already), remixed and <br/>remastered, with bonus tracks, at the end of this month. I feel pretty <br/>sorry that I didn't like Megadeth instantly upon hearing them, but I was <br/>blind at the time, and thought that Metallica were a superior band. It <br/>isn't so - listen to the musical detail and the vocals. James is a great <br/>singer, but Dave is just better. At least that's my opinion.<br/><br/>Oh, and I recorded a new track too. I'll be releasing it on the RiviR <br/>website soon, once my wife is done recording her vocals, and I give the <br/>song a title.<br/><br/><br/>2004-06-27<br/>----------<br/><br/>So my co-workers and I like gimping each other's faces onto pictures. <br/>Well, now we have a website to allow easy access to these things. Check <br/>it out at www.gimpdesk.tk and leave some comments if you like. Trust me, <br/>the pictures are funnier when you know these guys... So you might not <br/>even wanna bother.<br/><br/>Time to go play Showdown for the first time.<br/><br/><br/>2004-06-22<br/>----------<br/><br/>So I call my ISP (Sympatico) when I get home from work, because their <br/>DNS servers were not working. I couldn't ping even yahoo.ca, but I did <br/>have an IP address on my ppp0. Well, I call them up, and I ask if their <br/>DNS servers are down. Apparently they were not aware of any problems. I <br/>told him that I couldn't ping yahoo.ca, but I was assigned an IP <br/>address, and there is traffic on the ppp interface. He confirmed with <br/>me, "So you can't browse a webpage, right?" I said "right." Because I <br/>couldn't. So he's like "okay, let me pull up the info for Can't Browse a <br/>Website." I tried pinging again, and it started to work. I said "oh, <br/>nevermind, it's working now. But just for reference, can I confirm that <br/>I have the correct DNS IP addresses?" And he says "I can tell you how to <br/>get your email...?? Will that help?"<br/><br/>...<br/><br/>......<br/><br/>"No, it's working. I just want to know if I have the proper DNS <br/>addresses or not," I replied.<br/>"I don't know what you mean," he argued.<br/>"I just need to know the IP address for your DNS servers."<br/>"Okay, just a minute."<br/><br/>Then he puts me on hold for a bit. When he gets back, he says, "okay, <br/>it's 192 dot 168 dot 2 dot 1."<br/>"Really?" I exclaimed, puzzled at how he would guess me internal LAN's <br/>DNS server address, which was incorrect, but oh, so close.<br/>"That's what they tell me," was his reply.<br/><br/>The End.<br/><br/><br/>2004-06-07<br/>----------<br/><br/>So I sit here waiting for the Calgary Flames to get their act together <br/>and win the Stanley Cup. It ain't gonna happen. So close, yet so far <br/>away. I'm used to let-downs. I work on HelpDesk for TeleSpectrum.<br/><br/><br/>2004-06-05<br/>----------<br/><br/>So I sit here waiting for the Calgary Flames to start off this game 6 of <br/>the Stanley Cup final versus the Tampa Bay Lightning. My prediction is <br/>that Calgary will pull it off tonight, but it will be a great game. So <br/>sad for Tampa, but I don't care! I just want Canada to get a Cup again. <br/>It's been many years since we did... And Montreal doesn't count. Don <br/>Cherry rules, and this might be the last time I see him on Hockey Night <br/>in Canada... And he's going out with style - a huge-ass hat with the <br/>Canadian flag on it... C'mon Calgary, do it for our country.<br/><br/>I've been playing Thief: Deadly Shadows lately, and I'm so glad that I <br/>have an Xbox. It's the only real first-person game that I can stand to <br/>play without a keyboard and mouse combo. It's got some subtle <br/>improvements over the older PC-only predecessors that make for a much <br/>smoother game... I love it.<br/><br/>I've been working on Battle Tic Tac Toe again now that I have a laptop. <br/>Progress reports are up on www.scapegoatsoftware.com in the Developer <br/>Journal section (look under Projects).<br/><br/>Still no donations for my plastic surgery...<br/><br/><br/>2004-05-15<br/>----------<br/><br/>I have now watched An Evening With Kevin Smith four times. I just love<br/>it... I don't... know... why.<br/><br/>Also, if you feel like donating money to my Make Dana Look Like Mr. Bean<br/>Fund, I accept PayPal payments at dana@mandrakeusers.org and I'd also<br/>accept cash, check, or money order.<br/><br/><br/>2004-04-08<br/>----------<br/><br/>I may be recording some new material this weekend, inspired by Skinny <br/>Puppy's reformation. Until it is released, check this out:<br/><br/> (18:15:19) rad89: man do you know where i can get the cd key <br/> for microsfot works 7.0<br/> (18:15:29) DOlson: www.openoffice.org<br/><br/>I learned today that the only thing better than my Burger King Whopper <br/>is someone else's.<br/><br/><br/>2004-04-05<br/>----------<br/><br/>New Skinny Puppy album makes me really happy... It opens the doors to <br/>possibilites that I had only dreamed about... I hope they come to <br/>Canada, so I know when to book my vacation.<br/><br/><br/>2004-03-26<br/>----------<br/><br/>Just got off the phone with a cool chick from Nintendo. Here's a tip to <br/>all you foreigners: selling pirated and hacked GameBoy Advance games on <br/>eBay is NOT COOL. You rip me off, you leave me with no choice...<br/><br/><br/>2004-03-17<br/>----------<br/><br/>And back to Debian I go. SmoothWall decided it doesn't want to see my <br/>NICs anymore, and the day before, it decided to turn off my Internet <br/>conenction just because it can. Well, screw that.<br/><br/><br/>2004-03-14<br/>----------<br/><br/>So the power went out for an hour and a half in a good portion of the <br/>city today, killing my 212-day uptime... So I tried out a SmoothWall <br/>install, and it's working well, except the IP spoof protection... I'll <br/>have to set up a DMZ. It's all good.<br/><br/><br/>2004-03-09<br/>----------<br/><br/>I decided I will write Unreal 3 in VBscript. Transgaming will probably <br/>get the vbscript.exe stuff working great in Linux by the time I'm done.<br/><br/><br/>2004-02-23<br/>----------<br/><br/>I don't know why I am admitting this, but I really love That 70s Show...<br/><br/><br/>2004-01-11<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, I have accepted a position on XboxAddict.com as an <br/>interviewer/reviewer/previewer. I'm working on my first review, which <br/>will be of The Hobbit. A game that nobody liked except for me... I will <br/>get free games once my trial membership is over, so that's good - the <br/>less stuff I gotta pay for, the better. It's fun doing reviews and <br/>interviews, and if I can get free games or free previews of games, all <br/>the better.<br/><br/>In other news, I did actually complete The Hobbit, and this weekend I <br/>played through Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance again, in preparation for <br/>the sequel's release later this month.<br/><br/><br/>2004-01-02<br/>----------<br/><br/>There's always something good goin' down at Mr. Sub.<br/><br/><br/>2003-12-28<br/>----------<br/><br/>So I got some money for Christmas, and bought a nice 27" Sanyo TV with <br/>S-Video and component inputs, as well as the standard composite inputs. <br/>I also got a high-definition pack for the Xbox, so now I need an optical <br/>audio receiver!! :) Been mostly watching movies lately, such as LOTR and <br/>stuff. Picked up Jurrasic Park for $4.66 at Wal-Mart too. Oh yeah, my TV <br/>was regular $379, but we got $100 off on Boxing Day... Gotta love that <br/>Boxing Day. :)<br/><br/>Maybe next year I'll buy a real bed!<br/><br/><br/>2003-11-23<br/>----------<br/><br/>Perogies + Deep Fryer = Dynamite Idea.<br/><br/>Try it!<br/><br/>Oh, and onion rings are Hard To Make. At least the recipe I tried didn't <br/>work out well at all...<br/><br/><br/>2003-11-13<br/>----------<br/><br/>Just when I get Star Choice hooked up and working, something has to rip <br/>my attention away from it... I figured that would happen.<br/><br/>I got The Hobbit for Xbox today, as an early Christmas gift... I only <br/>got it new because that way I got the free copy of The Hobbit novel too, <br/>for preordering. Well, this game is quite good. It's cartoony, not as <br/>bad as Zelda: The Wind Wanker or that new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles <br/>game, but certainly not realistic. It doesn't matter. It's still good. <br/>Some elements in it remind me a LOT of The Simpsons Hit & Run game, such <br/>as the picking up of the coins and whatnot without necessarily touching <br/>them. That's a nice feature, IMHO. So far, I haven't gotten far in the <br/>game, as I wanna take my time. I have until January to play this, at <br/>which point I will (hopefully) have a new game to play - Baldur's Gate: <br/>Dark Alliance 2. But until then, playing as Biblo will likely take up a <br/>lot of what little free time I have these days.<br/><br/>My new-ish job is going well. I'm taking calls all day long, I'm <br/>learning new things, getting more comfortable. On top of that, today was <br/>pizza day - the head of IT, who happens to work just feet away from our <br/>division (as opposed to in a different country with some of the other <br/>divisions) whipped out a credit card (the company's card, I hope) and <br/>ordered 7 pizzas, like 24 cans of pop, plates, napkins, dipping sauce... <br/>It was good. I wish I could have eaten more though. I should have <br/>brought a couple slices home, except that I had my mind on other things <br/>when I was walking out the door... Namely, The Hobbit.<br/><br/><br/>2003-10-31<br/>----------<br/><br/>"Now Fox has a new rule that we can't do those little fake news crawls <br/>on the bottom of the screen in a cartoon because it might confuse the <br/>viewers into thinking it's real news."<br/> -- Matt Groening<br/><br/>Uhh... The Simpsons is a CARTOON. Fox doesn't think much of their <br/>viewers, if they think that we will confuse a cartoon with an actual <br/>news feed...<br/><br/>Oh yeah, so I ordered Star Choice (satellite TV) yesterday... Yay.<br/><br/><br/>2003-10-28<br/>----------<br/><br/>"WOW THAT WAS FAST SHIPPING! ATTTTTTTTTTTTT"<br/> -- Feedback left on eBay<br/><br/>My question is: are Ts better than pluses?<br/><br/><br/>2003-10-26<br/>----------<br/><br/>"See, you people say you have enough consoles, and a powerful PC, but <br/>whenever a new console comes out, you people always buy it."<br/> -- Robert Shambro, Infinium Labs<br/><br/>That is all.<br/><br/><br/>2003-10-18<br/>----------<br/><br/>Okay, so I went and got my CPIC for job #2 today, and my interview is <br/>scheduled for Monday... I go to work today, and find out that job #1 <br/>decides that they want me (yay! I got the position I wanted) so now I <br/>have a useless CPIC that cost me $10 but I had to get it else Murphy <br/>would have laid the smack down on me and cost me both job #1 and job #2, <br/>and then job #3 likely wouldn't have panned out either because I haven't <br/>called them back in over a week... But, since I have job #1, that means <br/>I get to start Monday and make a salary, and I don't have to telemarket <br/>anymore! I'm working in my field as a help desk technician, with options <br/>for future specialization in different areas such as NT admin and so <br/>forth. I'll update you all sometime to let you know how I like it.<br/>:D <-- that's me!<br/><br/><br/>2003-10-14<br/>----------<br/><br/>So last night a friend of mine who works for a hosting company convinced <br/>me to register a domain. So, www.scapegoatsoftware.com is now online. :)<br/><br/>I gotta go get my CPIC done soon, else I can't get that other job.<br/><br/><br/>2003-10-11<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, it's been a while since I've updated this thing. Still waiting to <br/>hear about that Help Desk job. I have another interview for a Business <br/>Desk Analyst on the 20th, and I think I'm going to take it, even though <br/>it's only part-time, because it's more in-line with my field than <br/>telefrickinmarketing...<br/><br/>Anyhow, onto the good stuff...<br/><br/>Scapegoat Software is now working on Battle Tic Tac Toe. I'm the <br/>programmer (*ack* *cough* *hack*), and all the graphics are pretty much <br/>ready. Emmett is set to do the sound track, and if we think we can sell <br/>16 copies+ of this game, then we're probably gonna go for it... This way <br/>we can pay Emmett and start making a bit of cash. But we aren't entirely <br/>sure yet. Anyhow, information, developer journal, screenshots, etc are <br/>all up on our site: <a href="http://sgoats.cjb.net/">http://sgoats.cjb.net/</a><br/><br/>If you'd be interested in purchasing this game for $10 (download) or $15 <br/>(on CD, shipped to your home), then please PLEASE let me know. You can <br/>email me at dolson@icculus.org, and that way we can judge if this game <br/>should go commercial or not. Thanks in advance.<br/><br/><br/>2003-09-21<br/>----------<br/><br/>I had an interview for Help Desk Technician, and it went well. I want <br/>that job. Or any job. As long as I can stop telemarketing. Bring it on, <br/>I'm ready. I can take it. PLEASE!<br/><br/>So, here's my Linux-related prediction: Transgaming will stop supporting <br/>Linux and switch business plans to become competition for MacSoft... <br/>Yeah, that's my prediction. So, if it happens, remember, you heard it <br/>here first. :)<br/><br/><br/>2003-09-13<br/>----------<br/><br/>< me> Hi, this is Dana Olson calling on behalf of SBC, how are you <br/>today?<br/>< dude> Hi, I'm on that Do Not Call list.<br/>< me> You're on our Do Not Call list?<br/>< dude> No, I'm on the National Do Not Call list.<br/>< me> Oh, the one that takes effect on October 1st.<br/>< dude> ...<br/>< me> ... It's September right now...<br/>< dude> ...<br/>< me> So we are allowed to call you until October...<br/>< dude> ... Okay, send me the info in the mail.<br/>< me> I will do that, and you have a great night. Thanks for speaking <br/>with SBC.<br/><br/>Yes, that conversation actually took place tonight. I just thought I'd <br/>share, even if no one sees any humor value in it. :)<br/><br/>Anyhow, I've got an interview for an inbound call center on Tuesday. If <br/>I'm offered the position there, I'm about 99% sure that I'm going to <br/>take it. The pay is better, and I can finally get out of calling people <br/>during their dinner. And just in time for the National Do Not Call list <br/>to take effect. :)<br/><br/>Today I had an information session at a consulting firm, and I all but <br/>have the position for supply business desk analyst... I'd be doing <br/>password resets mostly to start, and that's FINE by me. I hope that I <br/>can work it all out around my schedule, whatever it will be then, so <br/>that I can do it on the side (it's a supply position, so no guaranteed <br/>hours at all) of a regular job for a while. I think I have some <br/>decisions to make soon. It's exciting, while unsettling at the same <br/>time, since I don't want to alienate any of my opportunities... <br/>Decisions, decisions...<br/><br/><br/>2003-09-10<br/>----------<br/><br/>07:16 < LordHavoc> I just love knowledge, I try to absorb everything<br/>07:17 <+sibn> knowledge is kind of a pain in the ass to maintain, though.<br/>07:17 <+warthawg> I have some catlitter like that<br/><br/>Heh. Joe Barr has his moments (none of which appear on LinuxWorld.com).<br/><br/>In other news, I had a test at a different call center, and they know <br/>that I want a tech position. Hopefully something comes of that. Also, I <br/>have an information session at a consulting company, the one that I <br/>really wanted to work at when I first moved here, and they are hiring <br/>someone for part-time. Hopefully they want me. Also, my current place of <br/>employment is hiring a help desk technician, but unfortunately, they <br/>require a driver's license and a vehicle, which I don't have/can't <br/>afford. Well, here's hoping they don't care so much about that.<br/><br/><br/>2003-08-25<br/>----------<br/><br/>God, do I hate my job. Not only does the job suck, but the company <br/>decided that my Monday off will now become a MANDATORY work day. To top <br/>that off, I was in the top 18 in my group, so I gotta go in at 2PM and <br/>stay until 10PM. I signed up to work from 5PM to 12AM. This is a rip, I <br/>want my money back-- erm... Fooey. Someone hook me up with a better job.<br/><br/>I was playing Morrowind a bit today too. I'm not very far into the game, <br/>even though it's the only Xbox game I own, but yeah, I do plan on <br/>finishing it someday, if such a thing is possible... I haven't finished <br/>a game since... Oh gee, what was it... Return to Krondor, I think. Boy, <br/>that was a great game... I would love a third one in that series, as <br/>long as it was like RTK, and not like the first one. Oh, and as long as <br/>it was on Linux or Xbox.<br/><br/><br/>2003-08-18<br/>----------<br/><br/>So it's been one year since I deleted my Windows 98 partition. Yay me.<br/><br/>I'm trying to get time to record more music, but until then, there will <br/>be two songs on my mp3.com page, once the second one gets approved.<br/><br/>Time to get ready for work. And I thought today was going well...<br/><br/><br/>2003-08-12<br/>----------<br/><br/>03:07 <+Mongoose> it's pretty damn sad I've read more stories in <br/>morrowind than r/l<br/><br/>So, my weekend was alright. Other than my wife getting glass in her <br/>foot, and thereby we were forced to buy crutches. Geez.<br/><br/>Anyhow, I finally finished recording "Again" and most of "So Perfect" <br/>which will be on my album "hopefear" someday... Someday soon.<br/><br/><br/>2003-08-06<br/>----------<br/><br/>23:51 < lgp-michael|svrm> coool a cat just wandered into the house<br/>23:51 <+dolson> < lgp-michael|svrm> mmm.. I can eat today<br/><br/>23:59 < floam> i can see lgp-michael|svrm sitting in the living room <br/>dressing up his linux games and having them talk to each other<br/>00:00 < lgp-michael|svrm> I cant dress them up, I cant afford to, they <br/>have imaginary clothes<br/><br/>MUST... PLAY... MOHAA... BUT... CAN'T...<br/><br/><br/>2003-08-03<br/>----------<br/><br/>Okay, here are some tips for you irritable Americans:<br/><br/>- When a Telemarketer calls your home, they are not doing so to be <br/>assholes about it.<br/>- If you don't want the service at the present time, and this is what <br/>you tell them, they WILL call you back.<br/>- Chances are good that these Telemarketers are people like me: <br/>desperate to make money to pay bills and rent. These people are not <br/>trying to upset you, but rather they are trying to do their job.<br/>- They most likely work for a call center, which is contracted to call <br/>on behalf of other companies... You probably don't get the relevance of <br/>this fact, but I will get to this...<br/>- If you don't want to be bothered anymore, ask NICELY to be put onto <br/>the DO NOT CALL list. Here is an example of how you would do so: in a <br/>nice voice, say "Can you put me on your do not call list?" and the <br/>Telemarketer will gladly oblige. This is required by law. If another <br/>Telemarketer calls you, it MIGHT NOT BE FROM THE SAME COMPANY! So there <br/>is no sense getting all pissed off at them. Also, it usually takes about <br/>4 to 6 weeks to have your name fully removed from any given company's <br/>calling lists.<br/>- If you don't want any more calls from a given telemarketing firm, ASK <br/>the Telemarketer on the phone what company they are employed by. Many <br/>times, the Telemarketer will give you a different name than the company <br/>they are representing, because that's just how this business works. Tell <br/>them to put your name on THEIR do not call list, and then you won't get <br/>any calls from that firm for a full five years, as required by law.<br/>- The trick is to be nice about it, and MAKE SURE that they do take you <br/>off the list. Don't hang up until you have your name off the list. <br/>- Do NOT lie to Telemarketers. They do not hold anything personally <br/>against you. There is no need to lie to them. If you don't want to be <br/>bothered, you know what your options are, so DO NOT TELL THEM TO CALL <br/>BACK AT A LATER TIME.<br/>- Telemarketers call people randomly, from lists given by the company <br/>they represent. Just because you don't like the service or product <br/>being offered, doesn't mean that the next call won't become a sale. If <br/>you aren't interested, don't waste the Telemarketer's time and your <br/>time, just put your name on the DO NOT CALL list, and be done with it.<br/>- Don't say you are not interested before you have heard what the offer <br/>is. I could call someone randomly one day, offering $1 Million dollars <br/>FOR FREE, and probably 9 out of 10 Americans would hang up on me before <br/>I even told them what I was offering them. The point is, YOU CAN'T KNOW <br/>IF YOU ARE INTERESTED OR NOT UNTIL YOU'VE HEAR WHAT WE'RE OFFERING. <br/>TARD.<br/>- Last, but not least, NEVER ask for a a Telemarketer's HOME phone <br/>number. Honestly, you just look like a moron when you do. Do you really <br/>think that a Telemarketer has access to the internal systems required to <br/>set you up with whatever service they are offering from whatever company <br/>they are representing FROM THEIR OWN HOME? No, this would be a very <br/>suspicious thing, allowing people to work from home like that... In a <br/>professional company, the Telemarketers should be required to fully <br/>comply with the full security measures and confidentiality <br/>regulations... By asking for a Telemarketer's home phone number, you <br/>appear as someone who hasn't got a clue how a reputable business should <br/>be run, and you obviously thought you were being a smart ass, when you <br/>really were just a dumb ass.<br/><br/><br/>2003-07-27<br/>----------<br/><br/>So I turned 22 yesterday. Yay and all that. We ordered pizza and watched <br/>a couple movies. It was good. My dad even called me twice.<br/><br/>I've been working on a song a bit, trying to rekindle my love of <br/>creating music, but I'm struggling. I've been out of it for too long.<br/><br/>I'm working now, doing telemarketing. Not sure how long I'll be doing <br/>this stuff, because of many reasons... I could get fired, I might not be <br/>able to cope with the stress, I might get a job in my field... But at <br/>least it's money in the meantime.<br/><br/>My wife thinks it's amusing, but I seem to remember everyone's eye <br/>color... Well, not everyone, but almost everyone. I guess it is kinda <br/>weird.<br/><br/>Anyhow, I'm going back to write some lyrics and work on song structure <br/>now. Until next time...<br/><br/><br/>2003-07-18<br/>----------<br/><br/>I don't know what to do now. I could work in telemarketing, and possibly <br/>go mad in the process, or I could continue on my job search... I really <br/>want to work for Sony, but as my luck goes, I won't be chosen for that <br/>job. I need money soon. If I don't take the telemarketing job, I could <br/>never get one there again. I don't agree with telemarketing, and I can't <br/>see myself actually being able to do what they want you to do there. I <br/>just don't know what to do, what to say, or what to think... I'd be <br/>stupid to pass up a job, but what is the point of taking on a job that <br/>you are 99% sure you can't handle?<br/><br/>I have to make a decision soon. Decisions suck. Life sucks.<br/><br/><br/>2003-07-17<br/>----------<br/><br/>Watching movies has become my new hobby. And from that, I have the new <br/>hobby webpage, DOlson's Magical Fantastical Movie Reviews! Check it out<br/>at <a href="http://aslan.no-ip.com/">http://aslan.no-ip.com/</a><br/><br/>So my 22nd birthday is rapidly approaching, only nine days away, and<br/>I'm really hoping to be employed by then so we can go out for dinner. My <br/>wife had an interview today, as did I, and I have to go back tomorrow <br/>for a test and some paid training. Not sure when I'll know if I'm hired <br/>on there, but it's telemarketing... Something I'm not sure I could deal <br/>with for very long. I have my second interview at the Sony store on <br/>Sunday, and boy, do I hope that works out. I'd really love to work <br/>there.<br/><br/>00:10 < dolson> oh how I wish I was young again.<br/>00:10 < dolson> I bet you feel the same<br/>00:10 <@msphil> Can't remember what it was like.<br/><br/><br/>2003-07-07<br/>----------<br/><br/>I just discovered that two guys I used to jam with are living in the <br/>same city as me. That's pretty cool, considering one of them works where <br/>I've been applying. I'm going to contact the other guy tomorrow <br/>probably, and see what he's been up to. He's in a cool band now called <br/>Pinkslip, and they sound really cool. I hope I get to meet up with them <br/>again and jam a bit. Who knows, perhaps I'll get into a band myself <br/>again.<br/><br/><br/>2003-06-24<br/>----------<br/><br/>Home after another weekend visiting family... And getting an Xbox. I got a <br/>used one for about $100 cheaper than getting it new. Also, any games I get <br/>will be pre-owned as well, and this way, none of the stuff I buy will <br/>count as sales for Microsoft and co. And that's advice straight from the <br/>CEO of some Linux game publishing company too. It also saves money, since <br/>new games are bloody expensive.<br/><br/>I sold my copy of Win98SE along with some hardware, including a 15GB hard <br/>drive, a CD-ROM drive, and a USB graphics tablet, in order to pay for the <br/>Xbox... I got the DVD remote and an extra controller (both model S) with <br/>it, so it was a really good deal.<br/><br/>I've watched a few episodes of Family Guy on it, and life is good. I <br/>opened it up last night and put in a 30GB drive, and it was easy to set up <br/>and all that... The old 8GB is now in my PC, as secondary master, for <br/>backing up my documents and stuff. I still have my 80GB drive for my Linux <br/>(with 40GB partitioned for /usr/local/games).<br/><br/>My wife likes to play the old Super Mario games too, so it's actually won <br/>her favor, I think. And she seemed to like the looks of a few games at EB, <br/>such as Morrowind and stuff...<br/><br/>Interesting that, moreso than any other group of Windows users I can think <br/>of, Xbox users seem to be open to the idea of trying Linux. One guy on <br/>EFnet decided to give Debian a shot after I told him a little bit about <br/>apt-get... Every day or two he'll message me with questions, and I answer <br/>them to the best of my ability. He's not the only one, either. It seems to <br/>me that a lot of Xbox users are semi-literate when it comes to Linux. <br/>Maybe I'm dreaming, and perhaps that is the case in any IRC channel, but I <br/>don't remember it being like that before.<br/><br/>Anyhow.<br/><br/>Apologies to those of you who may have read this and hate me now.<br/><br/>In better news, job prospects at EB are looking fairly good, and if I get <br/>in, I'll see about getting some Linux games onto our shelves... Not sure <br/>how realistic that idea is, but hey, I can always try. I went in there <br/>today and was pimping Linux, Ryan, LGP, id, and so forth to the guy in <br/>there... He seemed impressed at the number of OSes that I've tried, and he <br/>himself seemed to have a bit of knowledge of Linux, BeOS, and FreeBSD <br/>even, so I may have been preaching to the choir...<br/><br/>My wife gets interviewed for a management position at some store later <br/>this week, so here's hoping that goes well... I applied to RadioShack and <br/>The Sony Store, and hoping that one of them (preferrably the later) will <br/>call me if EB doesn't do it first.<br/><br/>More job hunting to do tomorrow... Fun stuff.<br/><br/><br/>2003-06-11<br/>----------<br/><br/>Okay, so the trolls cleared out, yadda yadda.<br/><br/>Let me say, Metallica have proven to me that they do care about their<br/>fans more than people give them credit for. Their new album is MUCH<br/>better than their last two, comes with a free DVD, a cool case, and an<br/>access code to their file sharing site, Metallica Vault. Right now there<br/>are about 49 free songs to download, all of live concerts, and they will<br/>add more soon, and possibly even videos and stuff. This new album was<br/>well worth the $19.99 CAD I paid, and friends of mine paid only $12.99<br/>at Best Buy (wish we had one here).<br/><br/>I'm thinking of getting an Xbox as soon as I can afford it. Before you<br/>jump down my throat, realize that I don't really care as to why you think<br/>I shouldn't get one. I know the reasons why I shouldn't get one, as far<br/>as the rest of the world is concerned, but honestly, for the same price<br/>as a PS2, I don't think there is any better deal than an Xbox. I want<br/>it for playing NES, SNES, TG-16, Game Boy, and PSone games all with one<br/>box, one controller, and one power button. On top of that, and perhaps <br/>more importantly, I want it for media - DVD and DivX playback, coupled <br/>with Dolby Digital 5.1 support, I don't think there is any reason NOT to <br/>get an Xbox. Sure, tell me to go buy a PC or whatever. Just because you <br/>can't admit that Microsoft did something right for a change, doesn't mean <br/>I'm going to listen to you. There, I've said my peace.<br/><br/>So now I'm sharing a *gasp* Debian PC with my wife (she hates everything<br/>but Mandrake) because her motherboard decided to quit functioning. Just <br/>what we needed in the middle of a job search... Luckily, setting up her <br/>printer in Debian was easier than I thought (thanks ashridah for the <br/>inital help with CUPS). Our answering machine died with a message on it,<br/>then ressurrected itself a day later, but the message was gone. I *really*<br/>hope that wasn't a job offer...<br/><br/>Oh yeah, Gnome is getting better as the days go by, including Nautilus'<br/>script folder. Mmm... So nice, so nice...<br/><br/><br/>2003-05-22<br/>----------<br/><br/>I've decided I don't really like hanging out in the icculus.org channel<br/>anymore. Over the past week it has degerated into a troll breeding<br/>ground, and it's really just annoying as hell being in there.<br/><br/>Sure, some got kickbanned, but some are sitting on the borderline, not<br/>doing enough to get kicked, but enough to annoy the shit out of you.<br/><br/>Perhaps someday I'll check back in and see what's up. I don't know.<br/><br/><br/>2003-05-10<br/>----------<br/><br/>Decisions, decisions! Should I order a mod chip? Should I risk killing<br/>my over-the-counter-replacement warranty? Where should I order from<br/>that will ship to Canada quickly? Grr...<br/><br/>Oh yeah, I'm still looking for a job.<br/><br/><br/>2003-05-07<br/>----------<br/><br/>Ok. All settled here in North Bay now, and on the hunt for a job. If<br/>you want to hire me, email me. :)<br/><br/>Anyhow, this place is infinitely larger than my old apartment, and the<br/>air is clean and nice... The turtles needed a larger aquarium, so we got<br/>one that is three feet long... That oughtta do it for now.<br/><br/>So I wiped FreeBSD and put Gentoo on top of where it was... After 7<br/>hours of compiling everything, I had X and that's about it. Then it took<br/>a long LONG time to compile some things that I usually use all the time,<br/>such as Evolution, XChat, Gimp, Gaim, Quanta, and so on. And to top it<br/>all off, it's not even faster than Debian! Sure, bootup is a lot faster,<br/>and the fact that it compiles everything is cool, but uh, it takes way<br/>too long to maintain it, and OpenBox takes longer to start up than in<br/>Debian... And if you use OpenBox, you know that it *should* be hard to<br/>notice a difference in OpenBox's startup time. I guess it's a combination<br/>of X and OpenBox... In any case, I don't think I'll be switching to<br/>Gentoo at this point in time... But I haven't used it enough yet to make<br/>that decision. Stay tuned to my adventures. :)<br/><br/>Anyhow, yeah, did I mention I'm looking for work?<br/><br/><br/>2003-04-29<br/>----------<br/><br/>Well, tomorrow is my last day in Toronto. Our new apartment is much<br/>larger, and I can't wait to get there. I hope my internet connection<br/>comes back online quickly once I'm there.<br/><br/>Also, today I invented a new recipe:<br/><br/>Beefy Cheese Fries<br/><br/>Cook up one pound of ground beef in a frying pan.<br/>Put a half a bag of fries in the oven to bake at about 450.<br/>Drain the beef and put it on top of the fries when they are ready.<br/>Grate a half-block of marble cheese, and load it on top while the fries<br/>and beef are still hot.<br/>Yummy!<br/><br/>Makes one serving.<br/><br/><br/>2003-04-20<br/>----------<br/><br/>I wrote an article for LinuxHardware.org about Linux gaming. They<br/>would like me to write more, so hopefully I will get to do some reviews<br/>of some cool hardware.<br/><br/><br/>2003-03-26<br/>----------<br/><br/>Okay, so some new stuff is going down with me.<br/><br/>Firstly, I got my preliminary marks back from my final semester of<br/>college, and although they aren't so hot, I didn't fail any of my<br/>classes, so I have no rewrites!! w00t. This means that shortly, I<br/>shall have a second college diploma:<br/> * Computer Network Engineering Technician<br/> * Computer Network Engineering Technologist<br/>That's a lot of good news.<br/><br/>Next, BioWare finally released a beta of Neverwinter Nights! It<br/>runs pretty well on my Debian system, and I've filed 4 bug reports<br/>so far. On my wife's Mandrake system, it was running fine. This<br/>brings me to the third update:<br/><br/>Mandrake released version 9.1 of their distro. I'm sick of hearing<br/>all the "boycott teh french! boycott teh Manbrake Lunix!!11" crap<br/>on Slashdot and other various places... Mandrake 9.1 is easily<br/>the best distro there is right now. Unless you like multiple-hour<br/>installation processes (in which case, I recommend Debian or<br/>Slackware), give Mandrake a shot. The speed amazed me, and as much<br/>as it is tempting me to install it, I just love apt too much. I<br/>can't ditch Debian, as it is easy to upgrade - the only thing<br/>that Mandrake really lacks. I started to go through the 9.0 -> 9.1<br/>upgrade process, but I hit reset halfway through. It just felt too<br/>much like I was wasting my time.<br/><br/>Now, if Mandrake 9.1 would just co-operate with ravage's installer,<br/>or if it would at least play NWN without crashing, I'd be euphoric.<br/><br/><br/>2003-03-19<br/>----------<br/><br/>I decided that I hate personal attacks on IRC when I'm trying to discus<br/>something seriously.<br/><br/><kodgehopper> dolson: captain of the debate team?<br/><chandler> alright. I said cut it out.<br/><kodgehopper> okokok<br/><kodgehopper> no more hitting below the belt :))<br/><wolfman8k> dude u suck<br/>* kodgehopper takes a bow<br/>* dolson kicks kodgehopper in the face while he's bowing<br/><dolson> He was gonna suck my dick, so I had to do a preemptive strike<br/>--- ChanServ sets modes [#politics +o chandler]<br/>--- chandler sets modes [#politics +q dolson!*@*]<br/><br/>Now, I have no frickin' clue what that insult was supposed to mean, but<br/>I felt I had to respond. My silencing was worth it. That guy is an ass<br/>and was attacking me personally every 5 seconds.<br/><br/><br/>2003-03-16<br/>----------<br/><br/>I started making a cool scripted drum machine, but I have a couple <br/>problems with it... Namely, if the sound samples get played too fast,<br/>then they end up ignoring the angle parameters of the channel that<br/>they are to be playing in... So instead of having hihats in the left<br/>channel, they sound centered. This is NOT good.<br/><br/>I'd be grateful for any help with this one.<br/><br/>Source code and test script is here: <br/><a href="http://icculus.org/~dolson/files/ddrummer.tar.gz">http://icculus.org/~dolson/files/ddrummer.tar.gz</a><br/><br/><br/>2003-03-15<br/>----------<br/><br/>I hate how the world works. I hate people. I hate how they think. I hate<br/>how they act. I hate the media. I hate how people allow it to influence<br/>their every longing. I hate how they are shaped by what everyone else is<br/>doing. I hate it.<br/><br/>I stumbled upon this website:<br/><a href="http://www.comics2film.com/StoryFrame.php?f_id=2629">http://www.comics2film.com/StoryFrame.php?f_id=2629</a><br/>Here is the opening paracrap:<br/><br/> "If someone had walked up to you a month ago and said<br/> "Evanescence rules," you probably wouldn't have had the slightest <br/> idea what they were talking about. However, with the upcoming <br/> movie, Daredevil being fresh on eve