Sorry, Nate...
| How long would you last in a zombie movie by zombi357 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I was a little worried when Wal-Mart was out of stock of Halo 2. Fortunately the Best Buy a block away had a whole table full. I scored a copy of the Collectors’ Edition; I’m eager to see the “making of” DVD. (Hope they show their dev environment, or better yet their map editor!)
Read more...Linux is a jealous OS...
My Ubuntu install has gone very well so far, with one major hiccup - it rendered my Windows installation unbootable.
During the setup process, while it was installing a boot loader (which lets you choose an OS and loads it up), it informed me that it “should be OK” to place the loader on the Master Boot Record (the first place on a disk that gets accessed when booting). Not knowing enough to say otherwise, I let it do so. It was only later that I found out that Windows refuses to boot from any partition except the MBR. >:( (I’m just as mad at Windows as I am at Ubuntu.)
So my Windows install is nuked, and I can’t restore it unless I wipe the hard drive clean.
Now I have two choices. One, I can spend the next week backing up my 90 GB media partition so I can clear my hard drive, then reinstall Windows and try to reconfigure it. Two, I can try to learn the guts of Linux well enough to configure that.
None of this would be a problem if I didn’t have a vacation coming up in two weeks that I was planning to spend developing. Halo 2 will be taking up all my free time this week, leaving just one week to learn an OS, configure it so it’s suitable for development work, refresh myself on Java, and learn the Java Web Services framework, or risk wasting the whole vacation. Tough to do when you only have hours of free time each week.
P.S.: Linux is much faster than Windows. I do think this will all be for the best in the long run.
Read more...U.S. Army tests battlefield robot armed with pump action shotgun; bring on the Terminators!
Favorite quote: [Bush and Cheney] might as well have said, “We’re going to invade Iraq because they have too much sand.” And 50% of the American people would have believed that, pitching in to help redistribute the sand to the other sand-poor nations of the world, most notably Canada, which has almost no sand whatsoever but still somehow manages to remain calm.
Read more...QA...
After an initial glitch with the installation (which we’ve fixed), our testing department has reported only one defect with my new application, and that was just a so-called security risk (an offer to remember passwords) generated by Internet Explorer. 117 tests down, 50 or so to go.
Either testing isn’t doing their job (which is possible), or we did our job pretty darn well.
Read more...Some of you may remember my post last year from my short-lived Linux installation. Well, here’s the sequel, and I think this installation will stick around a bit longer. I just installed the new Ubuntu Linux, and I have to say I’m fairly impressed. Not only are there now drivers for my existing hardware (I bought a cheap but all-new PC to run the prior installation), the whole distribution is much cleaner and well thought out. And most importantly, it runs faster than Win2K, which is nice on my aging hardware.
Don’t worry, I’ve still got Windows on dual-boot, so my friends and I can still play games if we ever get around to it again.
Read more...God help us...
So not only is Bush re-elected, the Republicans have expanded their majority in the Senate. Conservative groups are telling the press they expect the administration will pursue a more conservative agenda this term, and more aggressively than before. (Well, duh, but it’s even scarier when you see it in print.)
I expect the draconian copyright laws, tax cuts for the rich, and public surveillance measures to start flowing any day now. I’ll do what I can to fight them (and I hope my like-minded friends will too), but I fear a few letters to Congress won’t stop this administration from making life miserable for America’s middle class for decades to come.
Read more...After 2 months, the transmission is going out on the car Diana’s parents sold her. (We got rid of her other car, because we thought it was going to break down sooner.) Dealer’s estimate to fix it is $2500.
Money was already tight, what with the loan we took out. And my credit card is maxxed, so that won’t be bailing us out this time.
I know we can come up with a solution. I just doubt it will be a pleasant one.
[Edit: after I posted this, I looked at the subject of the previous entry. Oh, the irony.]
Read more...We racked up a $100-plus bar tab last night...
But that was me, Diana, and two other people… Diana’s friend and her boyfriend racked up a similar tab all by themselves, and most of that went to the boyfriend. I had to stand guard to ensure nothing turned violent while Diana’s mom stood outside trying to talk him out driving off in a drunken, sobbing stupor over a domestic spat. I was freezing my ass off the whole time. Fun.
Had a dream this morning that I was attending school, studying network hacking and Japanese culture, with the goal of becoming a surgeon. Odd part was (as if there weren’t enough odd parts already), I was going to be a surgeon with my new department at my current employer. At one point all my co-workers were dressed in scrubs, ready to go witness a surgery. (These people are programmers in real life.)
Read more...As you Slashdot readers may already know, Google bought the Keyhole 3D mapping service that, for example, the NBC Nightly News uses in its Iraq coverage. No big changes yet, except for the reduction of an annual subscription from $60 to $30, and the introduction of a 7-day free trial.
The 3D features aren’t that impressive (at least on my hardware), but the satellite imagery is amazing. I typed in addresses for my family and friends, and voila - I was flying over their houses within seconds. (mr_mooph, I’m pretty sure I could pick out your car in your parking lot.) Even if I didn’t know the exact address, I’d just type in a nearby intersection and then navigate by landmarks (buildings, trees, whatever).
Then Diana and I went on a world tour - the Eiffel Tower, the Luxor Hotel in Vegas, the Statue of Liberty. Attempts to visit Venice, Osaka, and the Great Wall of China were unsuccessful, unfortunately, as the available satellite images weren’t sufficiently hi-res. Keyhole promises to keep adding detailed shots of new locations, though, so it won’t be too long.
Keyhole’s special client software is much easier to use than their major competitor’s Website, and flying from location to location is visually spectacular. (Imagine being on a pogo stick that can jump from continent to continent.) Simply amazing.
Read more...