Finger info for dolson@icculus.org...


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2003-07-18
----------

I don't know what to do now. I could work in telemarketing, and possibly
go mad in the process, or I could continue on my job search... I really
want to work for Sony, but as my luck goes, I won't be chosen for that
job. I need money soon. If I don't take the telemarketing job, I could
never get one there again. I don't agree with telemarketing, and I can't
see myself actually being able to do what they want you to do there. I
just don't know what to do, what to say, or what to think... I'd be
stupid to pass up a job, but what is the point of taking on a job that
you are 99% sure you can't handle?

I have to make a decision soon. Decisions suck. Life sucks.


2003-07-17
----------

Watching movies has become my new hobby. And from that, I have the new
hobby webpage, DOlson's Magical Fantastical Movie Reviews! Check it out
at http://aslan.no-ip.com/

So my 22nd birthday is rapidly approaching, only nine days away, and
I'm really hoping to be employed by then so we can go out for dinner. My
wife had an interview today, as did I, and I have to go back tomorrow
for a test and some paid training. Not sure when I'll know if I'm hired
on there, but it's telemarketing... Something I'm not sure I could deal
with for very long. I have my second interview at the Sony store on
Sunday, and boy, do I hope that works out. I'd really love to work
there.

00:10 < dolson> oh how I wish I was young again.
00:10 < dolson> I bet you feel the same
00:10 <@msphil> Can't remember what it was like.


2003-07-07
----------

I just discovered that two guys I used to jam with are living in the
same city as me. That's pretty cool, considering one of them works where
I've been applying. I'm going to contact the other guy tomorrow
probably, and see what he's been up to. He's in a cool band now called
Pinkslip, and they sound really cool. I hope I get to meet up with them
again and jam a bit. Who knows, perhaps I'll get into a band myself
again.


2003-06-24
----------

Home after another weekend visiting family... And getting an Xbox. I got a
used one for about $100 cheaper than getting it new. Also, any games I get
will be pre-owned as well, and this way, none of the stuff I buy will
count as sales for Microsoft and co. And that's advice straight from the
CEO of some Linux game publishing company too. It also saves money, since
new games are bloody expensive.

I sold my copy of Win98SE along with some hardware, including a 15GB hard
drive, a CD-ROM drive, and a USB graphics tablet, in order to pay for the
Xbox... I got the DVD remote and an extra controller (both model S) with
it, so it was a really good deal.

I've watched a few episodes of Family Guy on it, and life is good. I
opened it up last night and put in a 30GB drive, and it was easy to set up
and all that... The old 8GB is now in my PC, as secondary master, for
backing up my documents and stuff. I still have my 80GB drive for my Linux
(with 40GB partitioned for /usr/local/games).

My wife likes to play the old Super Mario games too, so it's actually won
her favor, I think. And she seemed to like the looks of a few games at EB,
such as Morrowind and stuff...

Interesting that, moreso than any other group of Windows users I can think
of, Xbox users seem to be open to the idea of trying Linux. One guy on
EFnet decided to give Debian a shot after I told him a little bit about
apt-get... Every day or two he'll message me with questions, and I answer
them to the best of my ability. He's not the only one, either. It seems to
me that a lot of Xbox users are semi-literate when it comes to Linux.
Maybe I'm dreaming, and perhaps that is the case in any IRC channel, but I
don't remember it being like that before.

Anyhow.

Apologies to those of you who may have read this and hate me now.

In better news, job prospects at EB are looking fairly good, and if I get
in, I'll see about getting some Linux games onto our shelves... Not sure
how realistic that idea is, but hey, I can always try. I went in there
today and was pimping Linux, Ryan, LGP, id, and so forth to the guy in
there... He seemed impressed at the number of OSes that I've tried, and he
himself seemed to have a bit of knowledge of Linux, BeOS, and FreeBSD
even, so I may have been preaching to the choir...

My wife gets interviewed for a management position at some store later
this week, so here's hoping that goes well... I applied to RadioShack and
The Sony Store, and hoping that one of them (preferrably the later) will
call me if EB doesn't do it first.

More job hunting to do tomorrow... Fun stuff.


2003-06-11
----------

Okay, so the trolls cleared out, yadda yadda.

Let me say, Metallica have proven to me that they do care about their
fans more than people give them credit for. Their new album is MUCH
better than their last two, comes with a free DVD, a cool case, and an
access code to their file sharing site, Metallica Vault. Right now there
are about 49 free songs to download, all of live concerts, and they will
add more soon, and possibly even videos and stuff. This new album was
well worth the $19.99 CAD I paid, and friends of mine paid only $12.99
at Best Buy (wish we had one here).

I'm thinking of getting an Xbox as soon as I can afford it. Before you
jump down my throat, realize that I don't really care as to why you think
I shouldn't get one. I know the reasons why I shouldn't get one, as far
as the rest of the world is concerned, but honestly, for the same price
as a PS2, I don't think there is any better deal than an Xbox. I want
it for playing NES, SNES, TG-16, Game Boy, and PSone games all with one
box, one controller, and one power button. On top of that, and perhaps
more importantly, I want it for media - DVD and DivX playback, coupled
with Dolby Digital 5.1 support, I don't think there is any reason NOT to
get an Xbox. Sure, tell me to go buy a PC or whatever. Just because you
can't admit that Microsoft did something right for a change, doesn't mean
I'm going to listen to you. There, I've said my peace.

So now I'm sharing a *gasp* Debian PC with my wife (she hates everything
but Mandrake) because her motherboard decided to quit functioning. Just
what we needed in the middle of a job search... Luckily, setting up her
printer in Debian was easier than I thought (thanks ashridah for the
inital help with CUPS). Our answering machine died with a message on it,
then ressurrected itself a day later, but the message was gone. I *really*
hope that wasn't a job offer...

Oh yeah, Gnome is getting better as the days go by, including Nautilus'
script folder. Mmm... So nice, so nice...


2003-05-22
----------

I've decided I don't really like hanging out in the icculus.org channel
anymore. Over the past week it has degerated into a troll breeding
ground, and it's really just annoying as hell being in there.

Sure, some got kickbanned, but some are sitting on the borderline, not
doing enough to get kicked, but enough to annoy the shit out of you.

Perhaps someday I'll check back in and see what's up. I don't know.


2003-05-10
----------

Decisions, decisions! Should I order a mod chip? Should I risk killing
my over-the-counter-replacement warranty? Where should I order from
that will ship to Canada quickly? Grr...

Oh yeah, I'm still looking for a job.


2003-05-07
----------

Ok. All settled here in North Bay now, and on the hunt for a job. If
you want to hire me, email me. :)

Anyhow, this place is infinitely larger than my old apartment, and the
air is clean and nice... The turtles needed a larger aquarium, so we got
one that is three feet long... That oughtta do it for now.

So I wiped FreeBSD and put Gentoo on top of where it was... After 7
hours of compiling everything, I had X and that's about it. Then it took
a long LONG time to compile some things that I usually use all the time,
such as Evolution, XChat, Gimp, Gaim, Quanta, and so on. And to top it
all off, it's not even faster than Debian! Sure, bootup is a lot faster,
and the fact that it compiles everything is cool, but uh, it takes way
too long to maintain it, and OpenBox takes longer to start up than in
Debian... And if you use OpenBox, you know that it *should* be hard to
notice a difference in OpenBox's startup time. I guess it's a combination
of X and OpenBox... In any case, I don't think I'll be switching to
Gentoo at this point in time... But I haven't used it enough yet to make
that decision. Stay tuned to my adventures. :)

Anyhow, yeah, did I mention I'm looking for work?


2003-04-29
----------

Well, tomorrow is my last day in Toronto. Our new apartment is much
larger, and I can't wait to get there. I hope my internet connection
comes back online quickly once I'm there.

Also, today I invented a new recipe:

Beefy Cheese Fries

Cook up one pound of ground beef in a frying pan.
Put a half a bag of fries in the oven to bake at about 450.
Drain the beef and put it on top of the fries when they are ready.
Grate a half-block of marble cheese, and load it on top while the fries
and beef are still hot.
Yummy!

Makes one serving.


2003-04-20
----------

I wrote an article for LinuxHardware.org about Linux gaming. They
would like me to write more, so hopefully I will get to do some reviews
of some cool hardware.


2003-03-26
----------

Okay, so some new stuff is going down with me.

Firstly, I got my preliminary marks back from my final semester of
college, and although they aren't so hot, I didn't fail any of my
classes, so I have no rewrites!! w00t. This means that shortly, I
shall have a second college diploma:
  * Computer Network Engineering Technician
  * Computer Network Engineering Technologist
That's a lot of good news.

Next, BioWare finally released a beta of Neverwinter Nights! It
runs pretty well on my Debian system, and I've filed 4 bug reports
so far. On my wife's Mandrake system, it was running fine. This
brings me to the third update:

Mandrake released version 9.1 of their distro. I'm sick of hearing
all the "boycott teh french! boycott teh Manbrake Lunix!!11" crap
on Slashdot and other various places... Mandrake 9.1 is easily
the best distro there is right now. Unless you like multiple-hour
installation processes (in which case, I recommend Debian or
Slackware), give Mandrake a shot. The speed amazed me, and as much
as it is tempting me to install it, I just love apt too much. I
can't ditch Debian, as it is easy to upgrade - the only thing
that Mandrake really lacks. I started to go through the 9.0 -> 9.1
upgrade process, but I hit reset halfway through. It just felt too
much like I was wasting my time.

Now, if Mandrake 9.1 would just co-operate with ravage's installer,
or if it would at least play NWN without crashing, I'd be euphoric.


2003-03-19
----------

I decided that I hate personal attacks on IRC when I'm trying to discus
something seriously.

<kodgehopper> dolson: captain of the debate team?
<chandler> alright. I said cut it out.
<kodgehopper> okokok
<kodgehopper> no more hitting below the belt :))
<wolfman8k> dude u suck
* kodgehopper takes a bow
* dolson kicks kodgehopper in the face while he's bowing
<dolson> He was gonna suck my dick, so I had to do a preemptive strike
--- ChanServ sets modes [#politics +o chandler]
--- chandler sets modes [#politics +q dolson!*@*]

Now, I have no frickin' clue what that insult was supposed to mean, but
I felt I had to respond. My silencing was worth it. That guy is an ass
and was attacking me personally every 5 seconds.


2003-03-16
----------

I started making a cool scripted drum machine, but I have a couple
problems with it... Namely, if the sound samples get played too fast,
then they end up ignoring the angle parameters of the channel that
they are to be playing in... So instead of having hihats in the left
channel, they sound centered. This is NOT good.

I'd be grateful for any help with this one.

Source code and test script is here:
http://icculus.org/~dolson/files/ddrummer.tar.gz


2003-03-15
----------

I hate how the world works. I hate people. I hate how they think. I hate
how they act. I hate the media. I hate how people allow it to influence
their every longing. I hate how they are shaped by what everyone else is
doing. I hate it.

I stumbled upon this website:
http://www.comics2film.com/StoryFrame.php?f_id=2629
Here is the opening paracrap:

"If someone had walked up to you a month ago and said
"Evanescence rules," you probably wouldn't have had the slightest
idea what they were talking about. However, with the upcoming
movie, Daredevil being fresh on everyone's minds, there is no
doubt you are at least vaguely familiar with this small "Goth-pop"
band from Little Rock."

Actually, yes, I would have known full well what they were talking
about, and I would have absolutely agreed. I think it sucks how a band I
have listened to for years - yes, that's right, years - all of a sudden
is now as popular as Avril Lavigne...

Why??? My wife is even more pissed about this. While we wish them success
and all, it's more the people that I hate... When I first heard them, I
loved them immediately. I tried getting my friends into them, but they
just shrugged it off.

If it's on MTV, it's good - if not, they don't wanna hear it. Sad, sad
time we live in.

Interesting words I found from an interview about a year or two ago with
Evanescence's Ben Moody:

"The world is filled with hateful people who parade the name of
Christ like a badge that grants them immunity to destroy anyone
who disagrees with them and they are turning more people away
from the love of Jesus than any other group of people in the
world. The #1 cause of atheism is Christians. We only hope to
offset that as much as we can. God gave human beings amazing
amounts of understanding, but they are still flawed and they
make mistakes. God understands all. He is not flawed. He does
not hate. He knows you better than you know yourself and He
understands how you feel. We hope to express in our music that
Christianity is not a rigid list of rules to follow only out of
fear of an unseen deity who will strike you down at any given
moment if you fail. I am a Christian. I still have fears, I still
have pain, I still have sorrow, I wouldn't be alive if I didn't.
The beautiful thing about My relationship with God is that he
understands all that and He has shown me what life is really for.
There are so many things in this life that are taken for granted
because they are overshadowed by all the hate. We write songs
about things that happen in life. All of our songs are not about
rainbows and sunshine. Sometimes it rains. Who can we help if we
won't even talk about it."

It is now just a matter of time before some of the poseurs out there
discover this and begin whining about how preachy this band is and how
they should change because their music is so good and so on. It happened
to P.O.D., it will happen again. It's all just a matter of time...

I have too much time on my hands to be worrying about things like this.
I really don't know WHY this sort of thing pisses me off so much, but it
does; always has. Music is a very big thing to me, and the way other
people treat it has a big affect on me...


2003-03-08
----------

It is done.

Yesterday was my final exam for my CNO course. I graduated CNT 6 months
ago. I hope I passed all my classes in CNO, but I won't find out for
a few weeks, I think. This waiting sucks. I doubt I passed Calculus...
I'll have to try to do a rewrite. Wish me luck.

So I got a Star Trek game for Playstation. It's neat. I'm not a big
Star Trek fan, or at least I wasn't until recently... I was one of the
few who actually enjoyed Nemesis.

Rune is one of the greatest games ever. Thanks Michael! I can't believe
it sold fewer than 1000 copies for Linux... Makes you wonder.

I can't wait for MOHAA to be ported. That game looks VERY impressive.


2003-02-20
----------

I don't get it... I'm at a store, and they asked if I needed anything,
so I said "I am looking for Freespace 2." What is the response I get?
"Oh, we don't have that, that's an old game." I should have asked why
they still carry Descent 2 then, since it's a LOT older than Freespace
2 is... That logic just doesn't hold any water if you ask me.


2003-02-13
----------

Ok, so we get to CityTV, we set up the IceBox, get pyDDR working.
Then, one of the crew there moves the table back, which hits the power
bar's button, killing the power to the IceBox. We have some crap
Gigabyte GA-7ZX motherboard which is caching data or something, and
so it corrupted the hard drive, rendering our project useless.

No TV for the IceBox. No IceBox for the techno showcase. We had to
run the IceBoxUI, Battle Pong, Glacier, and pyDDR all from my home
computer. What a joy. This, all after no sleep from 8AM Monday. I got
to bed last night, Wednesday, at 8PM. So, all in all, 84 hours I was
going, and I still had enough energy to eat half of a stuffed crust
Supreme Lover's pizza at pizza hut before passing out for 18 hours.


2003-02-12
----------

I slept one hour the other night, and none tonight. I'm about to go
to watch Breakfast Television at the studio because the IceBox is
going live, on the air! Prolly gonna play pyDDR, they will, since
Battle Pong is pretty boring.

I'll be in the audience, when my bro Erik will be on their stage,
answering the questions and stuff. If you get CityTV, tune in today.
It's on in like, less than 2 hours. I should go get ready.


2003-02-03
----------

It's my wife's birthday today. I gave her Blazing Dragons for PSone,
how romantic.

Anyhow, my DDR mats aren't in yet, nor is Parasite Eve. I'll just
have to wait longer, I guess.

I *really* gotta add the bullets to Battle Pong, since we present
in less than one week now.

I got cross-tools to work for me now. Yay! I had no clue I could
simply put in the MSVC .lib files for SDL_image, SDL_mixer, and
SDL_ttf.


2003-01-30
----------

I don't get it. Why do people message me on MSN and demand that I
tell them how to do their college projects?

Anyway, I'm in love with OpenBox. And Debian of course. I got all
sorts of cool stuff going on now. I love it.

More good news: My wife seems interested in getting her hair done
like Xev from Lexx. Stupid show, yes, but awesome hair.

I love my wife. I really really do. She is the best. Also, she let
me order two DDR mats and the USB adapter. Booyeah!

I was quite surprised to find a patch in my inbox from none other
than icculus himself... A patch for my game, Battle Pong... Yes,
the pong game that still sucks because it's pong. Anyhow, I looked
at the patch, and I can't say I understand it 100%... I don't see
how, at this rate, I'll be writing Unreal 3.


2003-01-24
----------

BYE BYE FRENCH DISTRO.

O' course, the transition coulda been made much smoother if those leet
sysadmins would have patched their MS SQL servers so that I could do
some updates.

I started downloading a 17KB file last night, and when I got up this
morning, it was still at 83%...

Stupid... Time to go do some ap-getting.


2003-01-23
----------

I got Debian going overtop of my FreeBSD partition, and I love it
so far. I'm ditching Mandrake most likely tomorrow. I feel sorta
bad about it, but I'll keep it around on my wife's PC. I'm not gonna
force her to change distros, and it'll allow me to ensure that my
tutorials work on both distros before I deploy them

I also got my Palm IIIxe working in Debian just fine, so that was
one of my major worries - then again, Slackware works just fine with
it, so uh... Debian shouldn't have had any problems. :)

I added a cool thing to my i.o webpage - the entire chat log from
the first day that I joined #icculus.org on IRC. Interesting
reading, really.


2003-01-19
----------

Well, everything is working in FreeBSD just fine. Last I checked,
Slashdot still hadn't posted about it, but they did post a news
item that was posted elsewhere on the Net the day before... I guess
they are slipping. :)

I can't make BSD see my Linux ext3 partitions, as their mount command
doesn't work the same as Linux... or their kernel isn't set up for it.

And I need to be able to mount them, since I only have 600MB free, which
means that the testing I could do for LGP is *very* limited.

Also, the font rendering either sucks monkey nuts or it's the video
driver.

o/~ I WANT MY, I WANT MY, I WANT MY DE BI AN o/~

msphil is sending me some Debian CDs, but they aren't in yet... I
hate the postal service.

Anyhow, it's 2AM and I need sleep.


2003-01-18
----------

I got that Palm IIIxe. The calibration tool doesn't really work, but
I can live with that. I didn't pay anything for this, but rather traded
some older hardware that I would probably never use again for it.

I got it to connect to my network, and I got it to get on the Net,
although not with name-resolution, so I have to use IP addresses. Thanks
to Chunky's writing. :) It's kinda neat, but not very practical for
something like IRC (although I tried using epic4 over SSH).

A keyboard would make this thing a joy to write notes in while I'm
not at home, and when I am, JPilot rocks me. I still prefer the
pilot-xfer -i packagename for installing stuff to it though.

It appears that FreeBSD 5.0 is out... No announcement on /. or
the front page at freebsd.org, but I see it on the FTP site...
Downloading now.

My estimated release date for Neverwinter Nights beta is: February 5th.


2003-01-16 (later that day)
----------

Well, looks like I'm getting a Palm IIIxe tomorrow. w00t! I'll put
Chunky's writings to good use. :)

Treke mentioned a possibility of finding me a keyboard, so that would
be awesome.

I added a place for some images that I make that don't make it to
TimeDoctor.org.


2003-01-16
----------

An extra special thanks to vogon. This guy wastes more time on helping
me than any teacher I've ever had throughout all my schooling.

I can only hope that some day, some how, I can make it up to him, and
on top of that, help someone else with C++ stuff. Maybe a C++ in
Basic English book or something someday. I shall see.

Reminder - don't bug people about ports. It is impossible to know how
much pressure it is for them, and if they are having a bad day, then
it's best to just STFU about it, instead of pestering and pushing.


2003-01-15
----------

Okay, I decided that I came up with some cool ideas for games to make:

1 - Kid Icculus, the Kid Icarus ripoff^Wclone
2 - Foosball 3D, the... 3D... foosball game...

Anyhow, I'll work on them after my next big project...

When this .plan was written: 2003-07-18 14:17:12
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