Pauls Rants and Revelations

The times I play paintball with my friends are always happy times. Somewhat scary if you make Jesse mad, but usually fun. The best was last 4th of July. My friend hosted a shindig at his property and of course someone shot someone else and then out of nowhere paint ball weapons, Spyders mostly and some Tippmans, we’re produced from thin air and then it was on.

Of course, i forgot my safety gear (go me). Despite the fun, I had quite the collection of welts which my wife was only too happy to poke at in regular intervals. So after that I searched a bit and come across a paintball supplies site selling all the major brands and more.

I priced out some new gear and was quite happy with what I found. The set I found had a ton of stuff including mask, spare tubes, a belt pouch to hold it all, and a wicked looking Spyder Pilot ACS. I don’t want to say the price since it might change but it was well under $200 and definitely worth it.

OK. Im off to shoot my friends (with paint that is). I picked up some really nice florescent pink they would look great in.

-Cheers

I was surprised by this one. It was fun to do but somewhat strange to find out the answer.

69%

So, I guess that either I would only be effective 69%, or only 69% of people would want to use me as a shield…

Either way, I don’t like the odds that I would be the one the hero grabs to shield himself from the firing squad in movie.

-Cheers

From the realm of the practical and useful, comes Uplogix security management. Now I don’t have a huge environment of servers and networks that I have to manage (just the little old MT package), but the products these folks offer sound pretty impressive.

The have all the usual buzzwords like SSHv2, data protection, and encryption, but it sounds like Uplogix actually knows what they are doing. While my small network doesn’t garner the kind of attention large facilities attrack from malicious users, it is still a good thing to know that Uplogix Envoy is out there.

-Cheers

So I spent 5 minutes distracting myself by trying to name as many countries as I could. Unfortunately, it is about typing them correctly instead of just saying them, so my score might be a little low. Anyways, here is the result:

59

So as you can see, its not a lot, but its certainly respectable. Now if I could get them to include Paultopia in the list that would be sweet.

-Cheers

Now this is one that I can really use. My Zombie Survival index is, I think, the most useful tests that JustSayHi offers.

59%

It’s just plain comforting to know that should I be trapped in the midst of a zombie wave of death, I have a good chance of making it out. How about you?

-Cheers

As some of you know (yea right, none of you blokes know) I occasionally need to put on the spectacles in order to see anything more than a foot away. The doctor said its from staring at the computer for the last 10 years but what does he know.

As it happens I came across this by chance : Great Discovery: www.ZenniOptical.com. Usually I don’t click on these things but what the heck, I do need glasses.

After a quick search I found some nice black roundish ones that my wife said would me look ’sophisticated’. $21 for frames and lenses is a fair price in my opinion so if you need some specs, definatley check them out.

Now all I have to decide is if I want the Silver, or Gunmetal. Its a tough decision you know.

-Cheers

You know, the web developer in me often wants to lash out (in a fun way) at the users. Something like rude error messages such as “You forgot you freaking name?! How lame”. But one of the more fun things in this business is Google and their great sense of humor. Take the following link I came across on digg:

Here to There - Google Maps

Now, Im not sure what is funnier: the fact that there are actually 2 towns with those name in France (leave it to the french) or that Google knows exactly how to get from, well, Here to There.

Its almost as good as the one someone found to get from NY to London, in which is said to swim 2800 miles across the Atlantic.

If you know of any more interesting or funny items like this, feel free to share them.

-Cheers

Now this is just plain disturbing. If I really was considering doing the do, this would be the clincher for me.

-Cheers

As it often happens, technology has once again fizzed out under the uses I put it to. My cellphone battery is about to die completely. It will barley hold a charge for most of a day before I have to put it on the charger, whether I user it or not.

Fortunately, there is a place I can get a fresh one that will put the life back into my primary means of communication with the world.

It was actually by a happy mistake that I came across Allbatts.com. I was looking on Craigs list for a laptop for my son when I found a decently priced Dell one that had a bum battery. A post I found for dell laptop batteries came up with the link so I clicked it (because curiosity has yet to kill this cat).

I forgot about the laptop battery I was looking for and search for my aging phone, expecting nothing to be found. But they had it. For about $20 I can (and will) replace my cellphone to get a few more years use out of it. Hazzah for small victories.

This could also help out my sister in law who is now forced to use one of those weird external power supplies to keep her phone working. Too bad Christmas already came but there is at least her birthday. At the very least I’ll tell her about the site.

In short, if you are looking for a batter, any battery, take a look at AllBatts. I would be surprised if they don’t carry what you are looking for. If you do find and use it, leave a comment. Happy tales are always welcome.

-Cheers

It would be just my luck that these things happen.

As I said previously, my wife bought me the Valve Orange Box for christmas. I thought this was the best thing. I immediately started downloading (as she just gave me the money for it cause it wasn’t in stores here) and even though it was going to take a good few hours (I was downloading everything that game with it, about 15 gigs worth) I was in high spirits.

I check back a few hours later and most of the downloads are hanging around 97%. Then I notice that there is no activity on the network. The wireless works but my game system is on an ethernet cable. I check the cable and everything and no go. I check the LAN settings and still nothing. I restart and it starts back up again, then freezes at 99%. I restart and manage to grab the rest of it just when the connection dies again.

So I’m frustrated but at least I have the game. I play a little but its not as great since an internet connection is required to record and display all of you achievements. I finished Portal and Episode 2 but have yet to play TF2 until the connection works.

After days of messing with setting I say “fuck it” and go get a network card. I throw it in and everything is up again and my achievements and recorded and I can play TF2. I only started it to make sure its working but I had a lot of work to do so I did that for the next couple of days. I put my game system to standby and get to working.

Today dawns and I am just getting over a cold that has been going around the family for a week. My kids want to watch a movie so I though to let them watch on the game machine since it has surround sound. I hit that power button and … wait for it… nothing happens.

I push it again and still nothing. I push it again frantically and no go. I rip off the hood and check connections and still nothing.

Now, I am officially pissed. I tried tracing the problem but there is nothing I can find wrong. The power unit seems good, connections are on, the buttons work, it just will not start up. It may be the power supply but I have a feeling that its more than that. Its probably reached the end of its usable life as a whole. Its a 3 year old system and while still respectable by todays standards, it is a bit dated.

I suppose in retrospect I should be grateful for all the use its given me. Except for the last 3 months or so its performed well while coding, modeling, rendering and all other tasks. But I fear that since my top-o-the-line Macbook Pro came into the household, my old system just couldn’t keep up with my now lifted computing expectations.

Still, I’m miffed that it wouldn’t even allow me to get the 300 gigs of data off of it before it keeled over. I can put the hard disks in an external enclosure but I really need to get a working PC in order to play on Steam ever again. I really just need a new power supply and motherboard (and chip since AMD discontinued the 939 socket); the rest of the kit is still good.

Perhaps I’ll start collection around my wifes office. I would do it at mine but I work at home, and everyone knows that I’m not the most charitable sort.

-Cheers