| OMGWTFUPDATE! |
[15 Dec 2008|10:48pm] |
So yeah, I am actually still around on this thing. I just lurk now more than post.
Anyways, so stuffs. I bought a condo. Closes in mid-January. It's at 345 N Canal St. here in Chicago. It's a big old condo, 1900 square feet, duplexed. 2 balconies, 2 giant bedrooms, 2 bathrooms. Got it at a good price thanks to the decline in the market. I'd post pictures, but the real estate site has already pulled it because the contract is signed, so people will just have to wait. But trust me when I say that it is awesome. Close to everything, work, the Loop, River North. Tons of crash space, and free parking across the street on weekends, so people are of course welcome to come visit.
I'll throw up some pictures as soon as I can. Also, congratulations to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2) atomx on his recent wedding!
Anyhooters, that's about it for me.
Oh, since I didn't say it yet: Boobs.
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| Mario Kart Wii |
[28 Apr 2008|02:32pm] |
A bit late on this, as my copy didn't show up til today.
Friend Code: 1418-7127-8019
I'll be ready to play a little later tonight. I've added Ben, Daniel, and Val as friends already.
Ready to be dominated Fat Kid?
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[29 Dec 2007|01:01am] |
So I watched "2 girls 1 cup."
Yeah.
Yeah.
I just don't want to talk about it.
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[30 Oct 2007|11:09pm] |
So, I played Halo 3 awhile back, since you know, it was the one have to play game for the 360 (Bioshock be damned...that's right, I said it). Anyways, thoroughly fun game, really enjoyed it, blah blah blah. So I went back and watched the ads and the neill blomkamp shorts (the blomkamp stuff is stunning by the way, they need to hire him to make a movie). Those ads ( i think, also by neill) are stunning.
They have a stan winston designed diorama, and are so well orchestrated that you could not know who Master Chief is and still feel for the guy. I mean those things are staggering in their pathos. The piano bit for the one ad is awesome, and the rest with the various veterans is so well done its scary. I actually cared while watching those ads. And I'm a heartless bastard, so that's saying something.
And oh, hey its an update.
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[26 Jun 2007|07:59am] |
Dear God, they're closing in on me!
Blue Island is slightly southeast of my old neighborhood. Remember, we must always remain vigilant of the Sciuridaen threat.
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[18 Feb 2007|10:52am] |
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This video is worth it not only because its funny, but also because the main guy is a ben catlin lookalike.
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| Everyone else is doing it |
[17 Feb 2007|11:38am] |
Well, I was just notified of my acceptance to Northwestern University, to the Master's Degree in Medical Informatics Program.
So yeah, yet another member of the BrainCell heads off to an advanced degree on the path to world domination.
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[04 Feb 2007|07:08pm] |
Dear Lord.
It's only half time, and I'm already well on my way to completing a "Todd O'Connor."
That is, a baker's dozen heart attacks.
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| I have seen the future, and it is....shiny |
[01 Feb 2007|10:25am] |
My copy of Vista showed up at work yesterday. I got the Home Premium edition by watching some microsoft webcasts. And by watching, I mean, starting and walking away. Anyways, I'll take it for free. I installed it on my second hard drive, and left my XP install intact. I did backup a bunch of my media and documents first on an external to move over. Here is my experience, along with some initial impressions (I finished up around 10:30, so I played for about a half-hour and had to get to bed).
Installation
The graphical installer is nice. Very nice. It found all of my hard drives, let me manage some partitions, and load scsi drivers (if necessary). A few quick clicks and boom, the installer is on its way. No more blue screen, no more watching they yellow bar get closer. There is a reboot, and then you get right into the configuration. I had a problem here, though, because after reboot, the monitor would be fine, then flicker and go black. I naturally freaked out. Streams of obscenities flew from my mouth, weaving a tapestry of vulgarity, which, if not for its coarseness, would've been striking. I determined that the cause of the problem had to be my video card, and that's when I remembered that I had two monitors plugged in: my monitor itself, and my tv. My monitor is plugged into the DVI port via a DVI to VGA adapter, and my TV is plugged into the regular vga port. Vista defaulted itself to the VGA being the primary monitor for setup. So, I unplugged the TV and all was well.
The configuration is simple enough. Asks you a few questions, type in the product key, agree to sell your first and thirdborn if you run linux, you know, standard microsoft stuff. Then it launches about configuring and reboots. All in all, I would say from start to finish this took about 20 minutes (not counting the hour of backup and mp3 tagging and renaming I did)
First Impressions
Oooooh, shiny. Lotta things I like at first glance. Few things I didn't. The new start menu layout: good. I like how My Documents now has distinct download, music, documents, and video sections, all available straight off the start menu. The Sidebar Widgets thing is well implemented. I like how it is easy to call up the sidebar while in an application (hotkey or taskbar button). I like the look. It's glossy and slick and whatnot. Web 2.0-ish, if you will.
I don't think Aero is the coolest thing ever. That 3d windows thing is meh. Easy enough to use the taskbar. It looks fantastic, but I don't see myself using it a ton, particularly since the advent of tabbed browsing. The part where vista asks you for permission before it does a damn thing sucks too. I'm sure there's some way to disable it , but who knows.
Thus far I like it, but I have to agree with most of what I've read. It's nice, but not worth jumping from xp to, especially not at the price its selling now. I'd wait until buying a new compy, except for this whole got it free thing. Anyways, I'll be back on tomorrow with more thoughts after I've played some.
Oh yeah, you can officially now play hearts without it flying ridiciulously fast and not being able to keep track of who took the trick.
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| BCS |
[08 Jan 2007|10:21pm] |
Watching this National Championship Game makes me think that Ron Zook maybe, MAYBE, really did know how to beat Ohio State.
And that terrifies me.
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[02 Jan 2007|07:13am] |
I figured, you know, its been months since my last real post of made up of some kind of substance known as...well...substance, so here I am on the el-jay and the internets.
And of course, now that I'm here I don't have much to say.
Life is alright. I'm applying to grad school at Northwestern. Hopefully I get in and can start rocking that. Its a program in medical informatics, which is basically a fancified way of saying electronic medical records. Project management, laws, requirements, etc. etc. Good time to be getting into that stuff, so I'm excited.
My car has been in the shop for about a month now, after I got rear ended in that snow storm on Dec. 1. Hopefully I get it back within the next few weeks. The rental the insurance company paid for is getting on my nerves.
X-mas and the New Year were good. I'm actually coming off of my first long vacation since July. And by long I mean 3 working days and a weekend, but hey, its nice to recharge the batteries coming into the new year.
The Wii has received quite a work out over the holiday. Everyone loved Wii sports, although now I'm way behind in Zelda. Like have to beat the third temple behind. Plus Rainbow Six: Vegas has been wildly addictive.
Rugby starts back up on Monday. So now that I've gained 5+ pounds over the holidays, that's going to be awful.
Anyways, that about brings me up to date. Hope you all had good holidays and will have a good 2007. Adios.
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[14 Sep 2006|09:55am] |
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Whenever I buy a house, This will be a part of my ultimate cinema room of astounding awesomeness.
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[30 Aug 2006|09:04pm] |
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Well, everybody's favorite Senator Ted "Internet-is-made-of-tubes" Stevens put some sort of a secret hold on a bi-partisan bill to allow a searchable database of government contracts. I don't get it. How can this chucklehead be in congress. I don't get it. That information should be freely available under the Freedom of Information Act. And it shouldn't take a fucking arm and leg to get at. Secondly, last time I read the constitution, there was no way to just put a secret hold on a bill like that. You vote on it, it passes or gets voted down or vetoed. That's how this shit works. I swear to God it seems like the whole of Congress has forgotten what the fuck they are supposed to be doing.
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| Stuffage... |
[01 Aug 2006|07:08am] |
Ok, fat kid, we can now begin to get excited about the OLPC. Seriously though, this will be a huge litmus test for the OLPC. 4 million units is nothing to sneeze at, and it should give them a chance to run through their production line and iron out some kinks. Plus, these countries will determine whether or not the thing is worthwhile.
In other news, I bought a laptop.
It's pretty sweet. It's got a nice travel feature where you can watch a dvd without spinning up the hard drives or anything, and it will actually let you watch a 3 hour movie per charge in that mode. I thought about getting a slightly more expensive one with a better video card, but I'm not going to game on this thing. I'm going to be using this as my basic desktop replacement (for the usual wordprocessing, internet browsing, etc.) and for learning visual c#. My regular desktop is going to be put into a full time Ubuntu configuration, for use of GIMP, ruby, and learning other LAMP stuff. My motivation behind this is I got this huge tv, and I'm sick of having to turn my head to see it. Now I surf and code from the comfort of my recliner and watch tv all at the same time. Nerd heaven.
Rugby starts tonight, so the majority of my saturdays will be consumed for the next 3.5 months. Other than that, not much else is going on. Work is work, and I'm rapidly approaching one year at the hospital. I better get a sweet raise. I was hired on to just work at Riveredge, and my duties rapidly expanded to cover three other facilities now.
Adios folks.
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[24 Jul 2006|10:20am] |
What is this? An update? How novel.
So let's see what all is going on that I may unleash my witticisms upon.
Let's see...
Floyd Landis won the Tour de France. Fairly impressive considering he wiped out and was considered out of it with like 3-4 stages left, and then he leapt back into the lead in two stages. And he did it with a bad hip (which is going to be replaced). Ok, a bad hip, EPO, HGH, and probably a few other items from Lance Armstrong's medicine cabinet.
When Jon Garland is the best pitcher on your staff right now, you need to be afraid. Very afraid. And adding Sandy Alomar is no way to change things. In fact, you better hope he doesn't catch Freddy Garcia. Every single will be turned into a triple by that battery combination.
Bears training camp starts soon. Fortunately, this year's baseball season has made the after the-NCAA-tournament-before-football-camps-begin gap a lot more bearable. Pun fully intended.
I heard an interesting discussion about the "technological singularity." Basically, there is a point where futurists and others will be unable to predict what happens next beyond. After AI and fusion and other things are achieved, every basic technological need will be achieved, and no one knows what can come next. Very interesting.
I am in the market for some new books, and am open to suggestions.
New rugby season starts in a week. So long Portillo's, Nancy's Pizza, McDonald's, etc. Back to chicken and sandwiches and nuts. And the occasional drinking binge.
The new democracy player is out. You can totally use this to autograb tv shows via bittorrent and play them back. I personally love it.
That's all I can think of for now.
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| OMG LJ |
[06 Jun 2006|03:16pm] |
Ah, LJ, I have neglected you so. But fear not, I return to you now...with a vengeance.
So let's see what all is new since the last time I posted something substantial.
Work is rolling along just fine. Slow part of the year for the hospital, so that means I get to upgrade equipment and all that fun stuff. Currently beating my head against the wall trying to resolve some email issues we've been having. If anyone knows anything about exchange 2000 global address lists, please contact me. Other than that though, its been quiet.
The rugby season ended a few weeks back. We ended up getting to the Sweet 16's of the national tournament. We lost in the Midwest Championships to the eventual national champion, and then made it through the first round of the tournament. We then lost in the round of 16 to the eventual runner-up. Rotten luck we had. Anyways, all in all a good season and I'm looking forward to getting back into it this August after I've healed up some.
I started dating a wonderful girl named Nicole. Because of my stellar sense of timing, she is now in Washington DC for a two-month internship with NPR. We managed to cram a lot of time together between her graduation and departure for DC. I'm going to be heading out to Washington in the middle of July and that should be a blast. I'll get to see my cousin and his wife and baby as well, so I'm looking forward to it.
The TV rocks. The main issue is that my room has harsh flourescent lights and stuff. So I've tuned the TV to be a bit bright in response to that (cuz I don't want to watch the TV in the dark all the time. Mostly I watch while sitting at my computer or running on the treadmill or something). Anyways, so when you turn the lights off, the blacks tend to look a tad bit blue due to the increased brightness. So basically I need to move out. TV looks amazing on it. I'm actually thinking about upgrading to an upscaling DVD player too, since I actually got to see one in action and it was pretty impressive.
In other news, I'm totally torn on whether or not I want to buy the house next door or not. It would be a good investment, and I think I can handle it from a fixing up/maintenance standpoint. But I just have this sense of "I'm only gonna be this young and have gobs of disposable income once" about the whole deal. Like if I tie myself down to a house now, I'm gonna be missing out on something and never getting the chance to do it. So it's lead to a lot of internal debate and whatnot. I still compulsively check craigslist looking for apartments, just cuz it's kind of fun, and if I find a good deal, I'll totally take it.
That's all I's gots for now. We'll be back to your regularly scheduled insanity starting tomorrow.
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