~ix live(ish)

the sky is falling!

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 19:47:15 GMT

Did anyone else see the eerie yellow this morning? It gave me a fright. I thought there was something wrong with my eyes at first.

Mo-vember

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 10:26:05 GMT

I've been nominated for team leader of the office Movember team! It is a great cause, and I'm finding the hardest decision to be how handle-barsy I want to bother going. If anyone has any tips, or has questions regarding the event, or wants to know how to sponsor us, let me know. :) Tonight is the last shave!

what were they thinking...

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 21:17:01 GMT

Did any of you know that there's a dancing game for Nintendo DS ? I watched a guy play it yesterday, and I must say this: "STUPIDEST IDEA EVER!". I can imagine the beta testers.. "Okay guys, we've got this new game for DS. It's one of those dancing games." "er.." "But you don't dance.." "phew!" "I know. We figured away around it. You just tap your stylus on the screen in the places where you would dance if this was a real dancing game on a real console." "So we tap our fingers to the music.." "Yes, we designed a game around tapping fingers to music." "Is it called Tapping Fingers Hero ?"

Anyway.. I just had to rant about this. It was too good to pass up.

compatibility mode my a$$

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 10:54:28 GMT

I had my annual settlers II:gold craving just now, and do you think I could play it under vista.. NOOooooOOOOOOoo. *sigh*. And do you think I can find any other game similar? NOOOOoooOOOOOooo. Any recommendations? If anyone can think of anything that can fool my settler craving, I'm willing to listen, er.. read.

[edit]NM. I discovered that it works perfectly under dosbox.

Also, I think I've figured out that the reason I like games like S2G, trade empires, and transport tycoon is the logistics involved. For some reason, I find spending time er.. making logistics lines more efficient, very.. satisfying. It feels good to have a perfectly oiled machine, and the more complicated and time consuming it becomes, the more satisfying it is when you get it running perfectly. I guess that's why Settlers is so addictive for me.. Because it is basically impossible to get it perfect, due to the game design. I can't help but try however, and I'm always irritated when a geologist in the game discovers a whole lot of some resource in a clump and I can only build mines on some of it, wasting the rest. Maybe logistics games bring out my inner perfectionist.

sooo tired.

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 23:21:31 GMT

I've been more tired than this, but this is definitely in the top 5. Can't formulate thoughts well enough to do the rest of this entry so stopping here.

*edit, much later*

Okay. Well, today isn't anywhere near as good as yesterday. I think all the lack of sleep is affecting all three of us, and Olivia isn't faring well in the separation anxiety department (yes, she has a whole department for that now). Last night's various injuries pushed me close to the edge. Olivia must've grown recently or something. She banged her mouth on something and we had blood everywhere. Now I have to figure out how to wash a plush fish. She hit her head probably half a dozen times yesterday afternoon/evening, and every one of them caused a screaming fit.

My "dinner" only got half-eaten due to time restraints but, in spite of how ravenous I was, I was considering not eating any and just throwing it out due to the intense puke smell that it made the house smell like for a few hours after I microwaved it.

I've just had to throw Elizabeth's wagon over the door barrier into our room so that no one gets run over for a while. I've decided that that is something I can live without.

Dinner later this afternoon with friends is something I am looking forward to. It'll do the kids some good to play with other kids too. I've been gradually putting together stuff to take with me so that I can get them into pjs before coming home to save me some time. I may change my mind while I'm there, but I want to try to keep to the routine as much as possible.

*end edit*

*second edit begins*

Dinner was fantastic (compared to the trop I've been eating anyway, LOL). Compliments and many thanks to the chef and her other half for feeding me and the kids (who were quite well behaved thankfully). I am hoping I'm going to be lucky enough that both of the girls will sleep through the night without requiring an endless wrestling match.

*end edit*

4 Day Weekend

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 03:44:00 GMT

They're nice words those. This weekend isn't as nice as it could be however, with Elizabeth getting sick, and Olivia getting another molar. Very little in the way of sleep happened in this house last night, for any of us. However, the last 30something hours hasn't been all bad. We've been playing games and watching kids tv shows and having lots of cuddles and laughs. I predict another bad night, but all I can do is try to stick to the routine and hope they don't have too many problems with it.

Elizabeth was so funny when her Mummy called and spoke to her on the phone. She was grinning from ear to ear and was waving and shouting 'BYE!!' at the phone after I hung up. I guess she's still a bit afraid to talk into the phone, even after seeing the Pocoyo episode about it a million times.

Surprisingly, I've had enough time to keep up with things around the house. I've managed plenty of washing, a couple of loads of dishes, and bottle cleaning well before needed. AND, I've only had to use one disposable nappy.. well, actually, I didn't HAVE to use it, but it seemed like a waste to use a cloth nappy for like half an hour (as the child was going in the bath soon). Although now that I think about it again, it was kind of a waste NOT using cloth, since the nappy was basically unused and had to be thrown in the bin.

Speaking of the bin, I'm sure one of our neighbourly neighbours was very nice and kind and swapped their broken wheelie bin for our perfectly good one, since now we have one with a busted lid. Either that or it broke the other day when the rubbish was taken by the truck, but I'm fairly sure its a different bin.

Followups to these mundanities and more (or less), after the break (between posts).

I guess its time to quit civ4 when..

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 10:55:09 GMT

it crashes and drops you back to the desktop without warning. *sigh* I was starting to get the hang of the mod I was playing too (Fallen from Heaven II). I guess the mod still has a few bugs. Maybe there's a patch that I didn't see. Might check it out some time. Oh well, maybe I'll go get under a blanket and read some more Dune.

PS. LOL, how long has indescribable been a mood in that list? I could have used that the other night. Oh well. Guess I didn't see it for some reason. I'll pick hopeful tonight, as I'm in the hope Olivia will actually sleep through tonight.

Unproductive Days

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 08:56:25 GMT

Some days you wonder why you bother trying. This wasn't one of those, because I knew that getting paid was why I bothered. Anyway, to cut a short story shorter, I'm hoping to finish off the day with something productive like possibly writing up some more of my book, or maybe reading more of Dune since I've noticed I'm getting very close to the end and just need a couple of decent reading sessions. I'd even be tempted to stay up late and get it done for completely but its been a long day since the littlest girl got Daddy up in the dark hours of the morning this morning and kept him up past when she fell asleep again, since her sister was up after that. Well, at least they know how to take turns at something, even if its something I'd want to discourage.

ooh, new look and feel..

Thu, 31 May 2007 11:58:24 GMT

I haven't looked at new LJ options in a while, and this new theme is rather swish even if I do type so myself, which I do, because I'm not some kind of un-typist.

It'd be nice to edit the margins.. maybe I'll play with it a bit more at some point.

On a completely different note that I've just been reminded of: for some reason there is never a mood description that suits my mood. I went through every single one too thinking maybe I just didn't see it and that I should check them all to be sure, so I am concluding that there has to be some missing from the list. I suppose I could just pick one at random each time, which would likely be wildly inaccurate most of the time, but equally as amusing. Or, I could just pick tired every single time, which would defeat the purpose of using it at all, but at least be accurate since I am always tired.. even if it is irrelevant to the post. I refuse to be satisfied with the 'Other' option, since that forces me to put into words WTF mood I'm in. I mean, how am I supposed to put a word to how I feel, when I can't even find a word in a list that sounds like it might be what I am feeling like. It kind of makes me think of a doctor inventing a name for a disease based on what it looks like. 'It gives the patient large lumpy welts and makes the skin on his legs grow far too much so I've given him stilts to use until his immune system can counter the effects. I've named this disease Lumpalstiltskinitis.'

This isn't really a rant, although by all rights it probably should be. I guess I'm just not trying hard enough tonight. I probably don't really care that much. Life is good within a reasonable margin of error, and not even an irrelevant mood listing, nor a lack of time to read my books, nor a mounting pile of back-of-my-mind projects to complete, and at this stage not even the coming increase in our living arrangements costs will change that. It just makes it that little bit more challenging. I guess we all eventually have to pay more for the opportunity to think up new words to describe how they feel while you try to find more time to do the things you never get around to doing. This time I'll call it 'geflunk'. I can only hope that isn't some swear word in a language that I do not understand, which is basically all of them.

Hm, I just discovered a large body of hair where there shouldn't be.. on a tissue I just blew my nose on. That is seriously geflunk.

stay up or go to bed

Fri, 13 Oct 2006 11:05:03 GMT

I hope her weekend off is going well. No. More than that. I hope its the best weekend ever. The mother of all weekends. If she's not having the time of her life- if after this weekend she has hopes for bigger and better weekends off because this wasn't quite the best ever weekend- then it wasn't worth it. Today I realised that I don't even really know my kids. Only seeing them for about a 60-90mins per day and never really having an opportunity to have to take care of them by myself has taken its toll. The last eight hours were very long, for all three of us I suspect. The early dinner and bedtime I promised my eldest (because she was quite tired all afternoon due to the short nap she had this morning) turned out to be a fair bit later than her normal bedtime. Her sister had a horrible wait of around four hours between bottles.. and no sleep in between.. and hysterical screaming for a fair bit of that time.

It's not that I don't want to do this. In fact, I've actually been looking forward to this for some weeks now. But I can't help but think that I'd actually enjoy spending time with my children a lot more if I had some time doing this prior to this weekend, so that I actually knew what I was doing when the time came. There's the feeling of being in the deep end, and then there's the feeling of being way out in the ocean somewhere - maybe stranded in Mururoa attol or someplace similar.

And now I ponder whether or not I should stay up for a little while as per normal to try to wind down and attempt to relax before going to bed, or if I should just admit defeat and acknowledge that tomorrow is going to be a much longer day than today. Even as I type this, I can feel tomorrow's schedule falling behind. I'm late before I even start.

most of a resolution.

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 10:25:14 GMT

Well, I got some new stuff to build a new PC. It's been a fair while since I've had a new PC so it'll be nice to use something mostly up to date. It's not the highest end stuff in the world, but it's hardly the worst. AMD 3500+ Socket AM2, MSI K9N-Neo-F, Corsair Value Select DDR2 (only got 533mhz, but I might change that at some point), a Seagate 320Gb SATA II drive with 16mb Cache (since these new motherboards only have one IDE port and I hate te idea of bottlenecking my hard drive on the same line as my old panasonic dvd burner). Oh, and I got a new Antec NSK4000 case to put it all in, to save having to pull everything out of the other case mainly.

*sigh* Well, now we have to resettle Elizabeth instead of sleeping. I think it'll be a long night. I can't say I blame her however. I know how she feels. All she wants is her bed and she keeps getting given some other strange bed that smells different. Your own bed is not something odd to request but we are far from home and she doesn't understand. Worse of all, the more tired she gets the harder it becomes to settle her. So much for a holiday. I'll probably be more tired by the time we make moves to leave here, headed home. As much as I like getting away from town and visiting Thallon, it can be a real mission with littlies.

Lastly, my hands really hurt now. This is the worst keyboard in the known universe.

omgtc, motherboard errors

Mon, 14 Aug 2006 12:36:25 GMT

I've known they've been on the horizon for a while. but tonight they hit for the first time, and the second time, and now i'm scared to play oblivion or even move files. I'm irritated that I have to fork out money to replace something that has been working just fine. I'm irritated that I have to replace the rest of the PC just because nothing is compatible anymore. I guess I'm just irritated because I don't really want to spend the money at all, but It'd be a shame to not be able to use my PC at all. It's a shame that I just got a new video card and monitor, and its going to be a shame to put back my plans to get a notebook PC for myself. I'm kinda tempted to sell my hdds and get a SATA drive as well, while I'm at it. It's even tempting to buy a cheap crappy socket A motherboard from someplace and sell the system complete and then start again. I dunno. Even if we put a crap video card in it and keep the GF6800 for Sandra's PC. *sigh* It's all too hard. I have a spreadsheet open currently with a list of pricing on some new gear with options for video cards, and I'm kinda thankful I still work at a distributor. Retail on all this gear would be loads more. Even so, its a lot of outlay for something I won't be using that often. Maybe I should just get a notebook first.

Joined the Blades

Thu, 03 Aug 2006 12:04:22 GMT

Ok, so I've managed to survive Kvast, escorted Martin Septim back to Wynon Priory and fended off the Mythic Dawn assassins there (but not before they stole the Amulet), then went with Jauffre and Martin on horseback to the Cloud Temple. And now, I've joined the Blades. So my next step is to take a few scenic screenshots from the top of the temple overlooking the surrounding countryside and then get back on Tinfoil and ride down to the Imperial City to see my next contact, and to maybe stock up on healing potions etc. I'm thinking about riding there manually instead of just clicking on the map location in the Active Quest map, just to see how fast I can do it on horseback, and for the riding practice too (it has a way different feel to walking/running and takes getting used to).

am i the idiot magnet?

Mon, 31 Jul 2006 20:34:13 GMT

*sigh* geez i hate idiots.

omgtc

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 12:46:08 GMT

I can't believe I just managed to defeat the demon guy that kept killing my character over and over. There's something to be said for actually using potions that you carry around. I guess I carry them for so long that I forget I have them. It's kind of strange that all these demons are able to be destroyed using fire.. considering the Oblivion plane is full of fire. Ah well, I'm not complaining. Whatever gets me to the end of this stupid quest and back through the gate is fine.

finally back online

Tue, 25 Jul 2006 11:48:01 GMT

Well, i'm back. it took several weeks but i'm here. and now with a bigger monitor.. yay!

oblivion

Sat, 08 Jul 2006 08:48:25 GMT

There's a fair few games that I really really like, and a few that I put on pedal stools (snicker) like, starcon2 (or the ur-quan masters if you play the remake), the master of orion series, pretty much any of the wotc games, eg. baldur's gate, nwn etc and of course civ (any of them will do, but 1 and 4 are the best, and alpha centauri is included in these too. In fact, I'll include Colonization in here as well), and settlers 2 Gold. The elder scrolls games never really grabbed me. I guess it was just the interface that ruined it for me. Much the same problem as when I attempted to play X2. It's a shame when really awesome games go back on the shelf because the interface requires some kind of calculus equation to figure out. However, Oblivion seems to overcome the interface problems of its predecessors as well as being amazingly beautiful. It is seriously a work of art, even on my not-even-close-to-high-end machine. In fact, it seems quite playable on this box, in spite of the high requirements. Although I guess I'm not using the highest graphic quality settings, but it still looks wonderful. It's almost as if it was made as an interactive travel brochure. It makes you want to go places and see things, and you remember where such and such a picturesque place was. I know other people who take screen captures when they find a nice place to look at too, so its not just me. One of these days, I will be able to afford to get a horse too, and then I'll be able to travel around even quicker.. to see the sights that much more efficiently. Maybe then, I'll be able to write a hhgttg-style 'See all the sights in the empire with 38 gold coins or less' travel book. Now that's a goal if ever I saw/thought of/threw a book at/ate one.

And now, the get up noise.

OMGTC

Sat, 08 Jul 2006 05:53:03 GMT

(abbrev: Oh my god the chips. Exclamation of extreme proportions. Derived from bad television advertisement where an oven in use cooking potato chips is on fire due to negligence. Can be used in any really bad situation to try to explain the level of badness involved in the catastrophe to the surrounding people.)

I have a hard drive that is making loud clunking OMGTC noises.

yay! i can be lame too.

Wed, 05 Jul 2006 10:44:19 GMT

I escaped from the Dungeon of Kazuixy!

I killed Dreamsofglass the goblin and Aiofe the gelatinous cube.

I looted the Dagger of Role-play, the Sword of Role-play, the Armour of Games and 65 gold pieces.

Score: 65

Explore the Dungeon of Kazuixy and try to beat this score,
or enter your username to generate and explore your own dungeon...

moving and stuff

Sun, 02 Jul 2006 01:08:28 GMT

It feels good to be starting the preparing to move process. I hate moving house, but after all the waiting involved this time, it will be good to have it out of the way. I'm also looking forward to living in a house that better suits our needs.

Graphics errors update

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 11:21:49 GMT

Okay. We thought we had fixed the problems by disabling the default hardware acceleration tick box in the drivers. It seemed to stop the problem, but I just got a bsod from the same error, after half a turn of civ. If I didn't have to work I would have thoroughly tested this thing by now and taken it back to work with a big DOA on my lips. However, now we're beyond the DOA period and I'll have to take it back under warranty if it turns out its the card's fault. If I had more time to spend looking at it, I could play some more Oblivion or something to stretch the card's abilities and try to make it crash a few more times (this time in something other than Civ). *sigh*

Somehow I'm not surprised.

Tue, 27 Jun 2006 21:15:56 GMT

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vidcard issues update

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 10:27:02 GMT

Well, reinstalling windows took away most of the errors. But there seems to be some action that still causes nv4_disp.dll to get stuck in an infinite loop. Unfortunately Civ 4 uses whatever function that is, on a regular basis. Often enough that I can't get to play more than two turns. Sometimes not even that much. Even more unfortunate is that Civ 4 is a fair majority of what I use this PC for currently.

graphics card issues

Thu, 22 Jun 2006 11:38:06 GMT

WTF does this card work fine in 3dmark and crash in every game i'm playing. This makes no sense whatsoever. I really don't want to reinstall windows.. I have too many games installed that will want me to reinstall them. *sigh* Maybe I shouldn't have tried to upgrade video cards. All i wanted was something to tide me over until my next cpu/motherboard upgrade down the track.. and what happens? I get an unstable PC as a reward for my troubles. I don't have time to sit and reinstall everything! Last time it took an entire saturday and the sunday morning after, and that was before we had two littlies. It'll probably take a week if I try it now, especially with work in the mix. And why does it crash in different ways? You'd think or at least hope, that if there was a problem it would be consistant enough to crash the same way every time. I can play about two or three turns in civ before it nv4_disp.dll bsods and if i reboot and try to load the game again, it doesn't even get past 'Finishing' in the in-game loading splash screen. And if i try Oblivion, it works fine for several minutes. I can walk around and pick up a few things and go in and out of the menus and play with the controls and then it will freeze on the way out of the menu and after some shouting at the screen, it does the same nv4_disp.dll bsod that it did that other time, but it took its sweet time getting there. I guess I'll try some older drivers and see what happens, but at this stage i'm not sure that will help.

stupid phone answering systems

Mon, 19 Jun 2006 09:38:21 GMT

OMG this got me laughing today. I had to be careful because someone picked up the line at the other end fairly quickly. When I rang a client, the answering system picks up to introduce the company and list the menu options.

"Thank you for calling [company name undisclosed]. Technology for smarter professionals." As opposed to what? Technology for dumbasses? Technology for people who want to look like smart professionals?

I immediately imagined working there, on a phone. A potential customer calls. "Hi, I'm a smart professional looking for some technology. What have you got in stock?" "For you, I have the latest in widescreen hair curlers, now with more blue LEDs. And this week only: buy two and get $10 off a Wheel!" "Wow! If I take four can I still have the $10 off? What about if I don't buy the Wheel?"