The image below is a billboard in Europe (likely the Netherlands) advertising the upcoming white PSP. I’ll let you guys make your observations concerning the ad; I think the title of this post gives my reaction well enough.
Heh, well, the main project I had for myself this weekend was completed successfully yesterday. The project? I upgraded my home entertainment system. :-) On Monday, I ordered a brand new ViewSonic 27″ LCD HDTV from Newegg. It arrived Wednesday, but I wasn’t able to bring it home until Friday (as I wasn’t going home straight from work Wednesday or Thursday evenings, and I didn’t want to leave it in the backseat of my car). Yesterday I went to Fry’s, and picked up a Samsung DVD player with upconversion capability, an HDTV antenna, and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children on DVD. I got them all set up last night; the old TV is in the office waiting to go into storage, and I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with the old Apex AD-1200 DVD player yet. So far, it’s been great; I watched FF7:AC last night, and this evening I borrowed my mom’s copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Both were great movies, and looked nice on the new setup. However, now I have two changes I need to make. The first is that I really should get a set of component cables for my Playstation 2, so as to take advantage of its capabilities in that regard. I wish the GameCube component cables were still available, but there’s no point crying about that. The other change is that I need to get a decent universal remote, like one of the Logitech Harmony remotes. I’m now caught with four remotes (home theater, satellite, DVD, and TV), whereas before I only had two. Narrowing it down to a single remote would make my life a LOT easier. Oh, well… I’m not going to complain overmuch. Needless to say, I’m very happy with what I have.
In other news, we had Chinese takeout for dinner tonight. We were originally going to have the hamburgers Mom had planned to make for July 4th dinner, but I suggested Chinese instead. I think my exact words were, “What could be more American than Chinese food?” :-) Ah, well… it’s funny. Before I started at T3, I wouldn’t have even dreamed of going to a Chinese food place. That changed when I got dragged to a Chinese buffet about three years ago. Now I count Pei Wei and PF Chang’s as some of my favorite restaurants, and the people at Hunam Garden (one of the local Chinese takeout places) know me by sight. I’ve even become more tolerant of Mexican food in my old age. (Though, granted, with one or two exceptions a Mexican restaurant will NOT be my first choice…)
I really don’t feel like working tomorrow, but unfortunately I have to. So much for a four day weekend… heh. Ah, well. Might as well pack up and get ready for the workday tomorrow. Fun fun…
This is a definite first. Mortal Kombat Online, The Realm of Mortal Kombat, Dave’s Mortal Kombat, Total Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat Outworld, and Kamidogu have teamed up to get a community-wide petition going to try and bring Mortal Kombat: Deception and Mortal Kombat: Armageddon to the Xbox 360. They’re not backwards compatible yet, but Midway and the MK community wants the Xbox 360 backwards-compatibility team to know that having Mortal Kombat playable on the 360 is something we REALLY want. I for one plan on buying an Xbox 360 in the next few months, and having MK Deception and MK Armageddon would make it a real keeper for me, especially with Xbox Live.
If you’re an MK fan and have a 360 or are planning on getting one, go ahead and sign the petition. We would really appreciate it. :-)
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/23/1755244
cyclomedia writes “Late on 22nd June 1996 Quake was uploaded to cdrom.com’s archives in the form of 7 1.44MB floppy disk images. Though it wasn’t until the 23rd that everyone realised (or at least, that’s my excuse for being a day late with the news submission). Cue much aggravation on the newsgroups as eager downloaders experienced glorious 2 FPS gameplay.”
Damn… how time flies. I still remember first playing the Quake demo on my ex-girlfriend Malinda’s PC, and rushing out soon after to get my own copy of the demo. Quake brought me many hours/days of fun, from joining up with Armand, Monday, and Missy for co-op play, to massive and furious CTF battles with Sinc, Venger, Jade, Armand, and Worff. Even when I started at Custom Computer Centers and they had their Friday night LAN parties, Quake was the order of the day. I still keep my copy in the CD rack over my computer monitor, and I have the soundtrack imported into my iTunes. Hell, to this day, there are projects dedicated to improving the game’s source code, which was released under the GPL a few years back.
I suppose I should play some more of the game this weekend, just for old time’s sake. Heh.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32550
AN INQUIRER READER attending a conference in Japan was sat just feet away from a laptop computer that suddenly exploded into flames, in what could have been a deadly accident.
Guilhem, our astonished reader reports: “The damn thing was on fire and produced several explosions for more than five minutes”.
Should you witness such an event, his advice is, “Don’t try anything courageous/stupid, stay away, away, away!”
Er… heh. Considering this was a Dell laptop, it makes me wonder about some of the ones we have here. Images of the laptop during and post explosion are on the Inquirer news story. :-)
Once again, another fun warning: this is probably going to be a long, technical, and likely not-very-interesting post if you’re not into computers and whatnot. If that’s not your thing, go ahead and skip this one. :-)
Anyway, I decided to spend this afternoon rebuilding Frost, the DNS server with the failing hard drive. For lack of an appropriate hard drive, I had planned on actually replacing it with my old Compaq Presario 1247 laptop. (A laptop as a server… imagine that.) However, I had to scrap that plan (or at the very least put it on hold) because I suddenly found that the laptop’s PCMCIA network card was missing. It’s probably at the office… *sigh* Anyway, while I was looking for it in the home office, I found an unused 8.4 GB hard drive sitting in a box. Now I didn’t need to use the laptop as a server… heh. So, this morning, I went ahead and shut Frost down, yanked out the defective hard drive, and put the 8.4 GB drive in its place. Then I switched the machine on, popped the install CD into the CD drive, and was ready to go.
… or so I thought, until I realized that the CD drive was no longer being detected.
At that point I took one of the spare CD-ROM drives we had, and popped it into Frost. This time the drive was recognized, but it wouldn’t recognize the fact that there was a CD in the tray. With no other option short of shutting down a working machine, I popped the 4X CD-ROM drive from Dad’s old Aptiva into Frost. Lo and behold, that worked… but then it turned out my Slackware 10.2 install CD was bad. I had suspected it while trying to load Slackware onto the laptop, but this only served as confirmation. Worse, the drive was old enough where it wouldn’t read any of Dad’s CD-RWs and my black CD-Rs had a lot of difficulty being read. I ended up having to make a run over to Office Depot to pick up a spindle of silver CD-Rs. Once I got back, I burned Slack 10.2 onto a silver CD-R, popped it into Frost, and was FINALLY able to get it up and running.
Of course, with it being a 4X CD-ROM drive, it took quite a while to get the OS installed. Then I had to get the kernel updated (for performance reasons) plus get the latest patches for the system software. I didn’t get finished until about 5 PM, which is about three or so hours longer than I had anticipated. Fortunately the machine is up and running now, and is pretty much in the same state it was before the hard drive had failed. Hopefully I won’t have any more problems out of it, but I’ll be keeping an eye on it just in case.
Now I can just have a beer and relax some. If only I didn’t have to go into work tomorrow and deal with the same kind of thing… heh. Ah, well…
http://www.openlinux.org/releasedetail.cfm?id=21370
LINDON, Utah, Jun 16, 2006 — The SCO Group, Inc. (“SCO”) (Nasdaq: SCOX), a leading provider of UNIX(R) software technology for distributed, embedded and network-based systems, today announced plans to release a new version of it’s former OpenLinux franchise in early Q4 2006, known under the renowned Caldera label, branded version 10 – or shorter “X”. These versions of OpenLinux Workstation and OpenLinux Server feature several technical enhancements and capture the best tools for Linux software development and deployment. In addition to these technical updates, each release features localization in English, German, Japanese, Korean, Chinese Traditional and Chinese Simplified languages. OpenLinux increases the overall availability of applications and critical data by including backup server facilities within its single, high-availability, fail-over operating environment.
“Caldera has always led the way in providing stable, reliable, tested solutions for our key Linux server markets, and this release of OpenLinux X follows that same course,” said Darl McBride, CEO and President, The SCO Group. “Regardless of whether you’re a small-to-medium sized business, a corporate developer or a reseller, Caldera OpenLinux X will deliver impressive, capable and powerful choices.”
To provide extensive reliability and performance features, the Linux Kernel 2.5 codebase has been merged with recently developed additions to SCO’s world leading UNIX core operating system. Already contained code owned by SCO is still included benefiting the stability and overall experience opposed to recent Linux kernel releases.
The decision to reanimate the very popular OpenLinux product series was made after it is evident that certain lawsuits regarding UNIX® System intellectual property and contractual rights are to be finished soon. SCO is eager to be the only future provider of Linux Systems for the enterprise market. Customers will again benefit from the high reliable SCO products, with additional XML and JavaBean support, at the low costs of a Linux System. As according to the Yankee Group SCO OpenServer products still outbeat Linux’ yearly uptime by about 20 percent, world Leading companies should still consider to upgrade to SCO’s UnixWare and OpenServer series.
First off… the 2.5 kernel? That was a fricking development kernel; we’re already on 2.6.15 by now, and 2.6 has been in use for well over a year! Secondly… they are, of course, assuming that they’re going to WIN their lawsuit. Anyone who has been keeping up on Groklaw would know that slowly, but surely, the suit has been leading towards a complete and total loss for SCO.
I wonder just who’s serving the Kool-Aid over at SCO sometimes…
EDIT: Looks like this is a hoax. Sorry, folks…
Well, right now, I’m sitting in a very comfortable room in the Hampton Inn in Odessa. I’ll be spending the night here, and heading back to Houston tomorrow evening. I must say, though, that Midland/Odessa isn’t really as bad as I had thought it would be. Granted, it’s still more or less the middle of nowhere (especially at the location where I’m doing my work), but it’s definitely a bigger city than Rock Springs, WY is. It’s a good thing I scheduled to be out for two days, as well… granted, a week would have been better time, but I think I can get this location more or less functional by the time I leave tomorrow. About the worst that’s happened is that I ripped my shirt on a chain-link fence by accident. That in itself annoys the living hell out of me, as this shirt (my tan long-sleeved shirt with the company logo above the breast pocket) is one of my favorite shirts.
Frost’s hard drive had another seizure overnight, and I can’t log into it remotely again. It’s still operating its DNS services with no issues (likely because all the information its hosting is loaded into memory), but obviously I can’t manage the machine. I’ve not been able to snag a replacement hard drive for it yet, so what I’ve decided to do is replace it with a new machine this weekend. I have one machine available that I can spare as a DNS server; I’ll rebuild it this weekend and put it in Frost’s place, then retire Frost. Ah, well… such is life, really.
Anyway… should go get a drink and consider going to bed early. I’m tired and need sleep. Oh, well…
Bleh. Yesterday while I was at work, I was checking my home email (as I didn’t have time before leaving work and I had gotten in a few minutes early), and I noticed that Frost (my DNS server) had failed to send its daily log report. So, out of curiosity, I went ahead and tried to log into it via SSH. No go; for some reason, Frost kept rejecting connections. Despite Sinc mentioning that it might just be sshd freaking out (as it sometimes does on his own server), I kept figuring that something serious might have happened. I wasn’t sure what it might be, though, as it was still responding to DNS queries without any issues. Anyway, I got home, and switched on the server monitor… to see the screen filled with filesystem errors. :-/ I powered Frost down and back up quickly, and it wouldn’t even detect the hard drive. Crap. I then powered it down for a couple of minutes, and brought it back up. This time the hard drive was detected and it booted. I’ve not seen any further hard drive errors, but I’m not taking any chances. I’ve already backed up the DNS server configuration, and as soon as I can scavenge a small (4-6 GB) hard drive, I’ll take the old drive out of Frost and rebuild it.
Also, it appears I’ll be getting one of my planned trips out of the way this week. I’m having to go to Midland/Odessa on Thursday to bring the internet circuit up at the building our location there just moved to, in addition to setting up a time clock and getting some data off an old machine. It’s not exactly how I would have liked to spend the end of the week, but it’ll do. Heh, though, it IS funny… Malia mentioned that this trip should be a fun trip and not a business trip. My response was something along the lines of, “There isn’t anything IN Midland or Odessa!” I wouldn’t exactly choose to go there on a fun trip, really… it’s really the middle of nowhere. Ah, well… at least I can always take along a DVD or something to entertain myself while I’m spending the night there.
I picked up a new strategy game Saturday night while I was out and about: Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. I wanted to try something other than Command & Conquer: Generals (which Sinc and I have been playing often the past few months), and I had heard Dawn of War was a very good real-time strategy game. Plus, I must admit, I’ve always liked the Warhammer 40K setting. (Those of you from the old days who remember playing Talisman have seen a couple of elements from Warhammer in that game, as they were both made by Games Workshop.) Right now I’m still getting used to it, especially with the fact that infantry is squad-based as opposed to having individual units created and manually formed together into units. Sinc’s getting used to it as well, but he’s a little more pessimistic than I am. Then again, I’d love to get a network game going where I can try out the Chaos Space Marines and put them through their paces. :-) Frankly, I wouldn’t mind switching to WarCraft III for our network RTS games, but that was ixnayed. Ah, well… we’ll see what comes up on the horizons. Hopefully the Dark Crusade expansion for Dawn of War will spice things up even more, especially seeing as they’re throwing the Tau and the Necrons into the mix.
As for me, right now, I’m thinking I’m going to turn in early, as I’m likely going to have a long day tomorrow. Fun fun…
Heh, of all the things… after I posted yesterday about Shinnokxz trying to get me into World of WarCraft by offering a ten-day free trial, he went ahead and sent me the keycode for the free trial. The thing was, the email that was sent to me with the keycode also included a link where I could download the entire WoW client free. Not being one to pass something like that up, I went ahead and downloaded it. Seeing as it was something like 2.2 GB, it obviously took a while. :-) Once it finished downloading, I took a look at it and was mildly surprised to find that the downloaded client did indeed have both the Windows and the Mac OS X ports included on it. I’ll probably load it up and try it once I get my Powerbook back.
Speaking of the Powerbook, the Apple Store called me and told me they weren’t able to replicate the problems I was having. I had a talk with the guy, and we came to a mutual conclusion. A few days ago I had tried my MS notebook mouse on the laptop I was borrowing, and it refused to work there. What we think happened is that the malfunctioning mouse was also preventing other USB devices from working on that controller, including my USB flash drive. So, I’ve gone ahead and ordered a Logitech V400 Cordless Laser Mouse for Notebooks, and will have it delivered to the office. In the meantime, until it arrives, I’ll just go ahead and use this old MS Intellimouse Explorer I have. As for the Powerbook, I’ll be picking it up tomorrow night.
Apparently the Overclocked Remix guys have released another site project. This one is called Blood on the Asphalt, and is based off the music from Super Street Fighter II Turbo. I’ve already downloaded it, but haven’t added it to the iTunes playlist or burned it to CD yet. The reason I hadn’t put it on iTunes yet is because I use my Powerbook as the main control for my music library. As for burning it to CD… usually when a site project is released, they release album art and lossless versions. They didn’t release either this time, so I’m going to wait for a few days to see if they do so. (There’s already been a few comments about the lack of album art; apparently the project lead mistakenly thought no one would want it.) If one is interested, one can find it at http://sf2.ocremix.org.
And that’s about it for this end… now it’s time to rest up before work in the morning. Fun fun…