Didn't get any extra sleep yesterday evening, did server work from 12 am till 5:30 am. At work at the usual 7:30.

Why do car radios not have a built in  Weather Radio? I mean really. It's FM, Mono, right above the standard radio band (can use the same antenna), and the equipment would add like $20 to the cost of a car stereo. You set it up to interrupt over the existing audio.. it would be great.

Remember to put 80% of your weight on your front foot:

http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/03/report-gary-gyg.html

Gary Gygax has failed his last saving throw.

Plz click yo!

Some ID tags I made, feelin nerdy...

These are neat!
http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/
(really would like one... it's more expensive than my whole computer though)
http://www.daskeyboard.com/
(Would like one of these as well. But I spent nearly that much on my Logitech G15 keyboard:
http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/keyboards/keyboard/devices/3498&cl=us,en
Which is also very nice.. (I have the older, blue one with the flip top, pictured here:
http://www.extremetech.com/image_popup/0,1694,iid=116500,00.asp
Anyway..
http://www.virtual-laser-keyboard.com/
http://www.l3sys.com/keybd/keybd.html
A couple of very portable keyboards... I wouldn't have a use for either though, really.
http://www.toniawelter.de/snw_en_5_tidytippist.htm
Just plain strange.

From demiurgent 
Rules are as follows:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

Using your favorite graphics program combine these three elements to design your album cover and post the result.

http://kanican.livejournal.com/13235.html

Lots of info on hate in Final Fantasy. Useful.

So... on Darkness Named (Diablos fight) I'm 0/4.

Oh it's been a comedy of errors.

Once the tank and main heal both went linkdead as we hopped in (they were roommates).

The second time the same tank didn't position properly at all and ended up getting knocked back to feed the diremites.

One of the pickup groups I tried to do it with didn't understand the concept of 'the floor drops out from under you' and no one tried to reposition themselves at all.

A party with an arrogant Dark Knight I joined who said "I can do this with 4 people, the other two of you are just gravy to make it go down easier" got nightmared when it was his turn to stun and he later apologized for being on the phone with his sister for the whole fight.

So I'm doing it again this weekend. However, instead of main job, Monk, I'll be going as a level 40 white mage.
I have to buy several pieces of gear to outfit for 40 whm but I figure I am going to go with this (budget minded a bit):
Light Buckler or Nymph Shield or Faerie shield (Preferably one of the latter two but I'm not spending that money for one fight)
bone hairpin, bishop's robe, friar's rope, Black Earring
mycophile cuffs, savage loincloth, white cape, geist earring, tranquility ring x2, Solid Wand

I'm shooting for some dark resist gear on the off chance I get nightmared I might wake up fairly quick. Is this reasonable? Should I consider a jack-o for resist or just take my mushroom stew? Is there any gear that can be recommended. Of course I am taking yag drinks, and I have a few hi-ether's laying around I might as well carry with me.

Any suggestions?

For those who had not noticed, by the way, AMV Hell 3: The Motion Picture II:AMV Hell 4: The Last One (I'm not kidding that's the name) is available now. It had a few choice clips in it.

For Nano, I'm writing... well I guess it would be called an original character fan-fic? It would be a manga but there are no pictures. Is there a term for manga without pictures? I don't know. I'm so confused.
Anyway, meet our protagonist. Takumi Yamazaki, Age 15, born in Japan, recently (last week) immigrated to the US to live in care of her Aunt Akino.
Takumi lives a shadowy second life though, as the dark magical girl, Shady Taki!

Well. Kinda. Not really.

Oh Takumi is the "evil" magical girl Shady Taki... it's just not her second life. And it's kind of hard being in the shadows as a magical girl when you are wearing the costume to school; See, some 4 years ago Takumi was recruited (against her will) into becoming Shady Taki. Dark Queen Jalla's personal magical hitgirl, as it were. There were certainly benefits; No school, no parents bugging her, she weighed 106lbs and no amount of chocolate fudge ripple ice cream seemed to change that. That whole 'being a twisted, petty, lazy, greedy, mean parody of yourself, watching through your eyes as if on TV' and 'hurting people', 'killing people', 'causing lots of property damage', 'helping maintain Jalla's merciless dominion over the Edgelands of Svest'... well that wasn't so fun.

As is the way of these things, Jalla's reign of terror was cut short by some odd looking girls in somewhat skimpy uniforms, and things all became right with the world again. For certain levels of 'right'.

Well... except poor Takumi. See, while she did think the whole magical girl gig was cool, she didn't actually want to become one; In addition, she had no idea how to make do. Oh the attacks and things, she remembered enough to do that sort of thing when neccessary, but she couldn't for the life of her figure out what she concidered the most important ability as a magical girl; How to change back to normal. Even changing clothes doesn't help; the magic morphs whatever she wears into her magical uniform, or at least a version, though the morphed clothes don't have the durability, stain resistance, and apparent self cleaning and repair properties of her 'real' uniform.

Now she's in a strange new city, in a strange new country, attending a school specifically for people who are 'different', (Magic not being completely unknown), and under the care of her Aunt she has never met who gained custody of her after Takumi's father disowned the 'shameless magical whore' that his daughter had become.

( Images behind cut )


Height: 5'1"
Weight: 106 lbs
Age: 15
Birthday: May 7
Sign: Taurus
Bloodtype: B+
Favorite Color: Yellow
Hobbies: Baseball, Putting together puzzles
Favorite Food: Fresh Red Apples
Favorite Subject: History
Least Favorite Food: Bananas
Least Favorite Subject: Languages
Has Trouble With: Spiders, other bugs don't bother her
Dream: To be normal again
Favorite Gem: Ruby


I will post stuff as I write it here; friends only flagged, not because I expect to ever get published but because I want to expose my suck to as few people as possible.

Btw please comment on anything that pokes at your interest or seems completely utterly stupid, or if you think I'm wasting my time, etc...

I think I may participate in Nanowrimo this year.

Live in fear.

And I hvae two more to go. The proceedure wasn't so bad, but the bill certainly was. Ah how I harken back to the days, so long ago (month or so) when I had health insurance.

I just got done packing up just about every server from my former employer (Valley Internet) for the people who bought them out to drag up to Nashville.

It's somehow sad, all those old, slightly dusty servers...


Now since I was asleep all afternoon (not wanting to be shit faced tired tonight) I'm gonna be really screwed up on sleep for the next 2-3 days.

Ok, computer comes in, I poke around, won't boot into windows, ahh has bad sectors on hard drive. Chkdsk, fixes, it boots. Tell customer, they don't want to replace drive. Say they will back up data and let it fail when it fails.

2 days later, computer comes in, won't boot.

Drive is completely fubar. the platters must be physically disintegrating. I can't get anything off.

'Oh I need this, this, and this file off the machine. They are critical to my business'.


/sigh

I have a 160 GB hard drive (western digital, for those keeping track of such things, OEM'd to HP, manufacture date Dec 2002) that the customer reeeeeaaallly needs the data off of. Personally, I think they perhaps should have backed their data up when the computer started crashing every couple of hours, rather than waiting until it got to crashing after 2 minutes.

Anyway, the drive runs fine for a bit and then I can't access data anymore. Once it gets screwy, it simply won't work at all, even after multiple reboots. That means it is most likely heat related.

So I'm using our removable drive tray, swapmanager, Unstopable Copier, and putting the drive tray into the freezer every 5 minutes for 10 minutes to cool it off.

Slow, but I still wish these idiots with business critical data (btw he's calling every couple of hours, wants his computer back now now now) would back it the hell up!