Jay McGavren's Journal

Sweeeeet...

$ ruby %scripts%\xbox_live_alert.rb nephariuz frejya

I, [2008-08-21T21:16:22.343000 #1968]  INFO --
#Utility::Email::Email:0x793e340:
@body="nephariuz\tXbox 360 Dashboard\nfrejya\tXbox 360 Dashboard",
@recipients=["me@wirelesscarrier.com"] ...

Thanks to a Live status feed someone published and a quick REXML script, I can get a text message whenever two or more friends are online, along with what they’re playing…

Great… The heartburn is kicking in again.

I’m not really stressed, just a bit depressed. Wasn’t I blogging something along these lines last fall? I need to go back and read.

Edit:

Okay, I think I’m seeing a pattern here…

2007-08-15:

I've got that burning, aching melancholy again. It's like the calm before a storm. It's not even about the baby... I think this happens to me every fall.

2007-08-15:

My heartburn's starting again. I know it's not triggered by weight, because I just came off a diet. Must be stress, then (and I have no shortage of that).

2006-09-05:

Ah, that's why I've been in such a blue mood lately! I forgot to listen to The Campfire Headphase for, like, a whole month!

Clearly, I need to just spend the months of August and September in bed from now on.

Thank you for my sincere apologies have a nice day.

The Dell Inspiron laptop (“Mini-me”) has been sending phantom keystrokes since we got it… It doesn’t interfere with ordinary document editing, but it renders Alt-Tab useless, makes new windows pop to the back of the stack, and plays havoc with context menus. It wasn’t bad enough to return it immediately, but it’s driving both me and Diana crazy. I don’t have any upcoming presentations now, so it’s finally time to send it in for repair.

Of course, first I have to get past “Lalit” with tech support. Her first action was to point me to a Microsoft Knowledge Base article on System Restore. Here was my terse response:

> This is a hardware problem, not software.  I'm certain of this because
> I was able to reproduce the issue on a live Linux distribution (i.e.
> without Windows running).
>
> Sorry, but performing a system restore won't help.  Please make
> arrangements for us to return the system for repairs.

Sitting in my e-mail this morning was a request for an address to ship the return box to.

I’ve done my time listening to muzak while on hold for techs who don’t know their systems half as well as I do; I’m through messing around.

Scratch from MIT...

MIT made a “development environment” for kids called Scratch. I finally got around to installing it this afternoon, and collaborated with Lenny on a couple projects:

Whale The Feeding Frenzy

They export as Java applets; just press Space to activate them once the page loads.

I keep sneaking into podcasts...

Heh… My old Rage Games site just got (properly?) credited on Rocketboom’s August 15th episode as the original poster of an “All Your Base” animated GIF. I have no idea if the Something Awful people (who eventually popularized the meme) got it from me, from Zany Video Game Quotes, or just on their own, but it’s always nice to just be sitting there flipping through Tivo programs and hear your work mentioned.