ThisBoyIsToast V4 >> November 2006 Archives

Honestly, when I was a kid I thought it was really kewl that NORAD Tracks Santa but I remember envisioning F16s escorting him into American airspace and worrying about Russian jets.

Everybody is blogging about the Wii. *blinks as point to post dissipates* Oh yeah, I have been wandering into Futureshop every Tuesday just to see if they have expanded their support of the two new systems, only to find empty shelves with nice PS3 and Wii clips. Yesterday I saw 4 boxes of the Wii and immediately thought to myself, "Ahhhh, so very quickly Nintendo deals with the demand and ships more..." Nope, they were just that -- boxes. Nice boxes though.

Fascinating. A webpage I was working on in 2001, to promote a music matching service kinda like Last.FM, has morphed into the Sonos Digital Music System to stream digital music wirelessly from PC to any speakers in your home. I recognize the theme of the graphics and that is even weirder.

Yay! Something came from the UK the other day and it was a belated BDay gift !! Actually something also came way of California the other day but that is a surreal other story.

OK, so not too long ago I lost everything I had been writing for the past 4 years. I also lost every website design idea and partial build and PS file I had worked on for the last 2 years. Clean slate. I hoped it would be inspirational, give me a blank canvass to work on. But I seem to be frightened, afraid to start again, to create again, or even to recreate again. Maybe it's other impending changes that are blocking things but right now I seem incapable of creating, only of absorbing. November 28 06

Virtual thoughts. Those few hours playing WoW nightly when I get home from work seeking to unwind and release some tension from my brow and add some to my shoulders have left me with some thoughts about the world famous MMO.

On other fronts, which I will not go into further here, "OMFG will you just call me back already?!?!?" This waiting is killing me. November 28 06

OK, now that F&F (fuckin' frenzy) is over at The Store, maybe my life can try and get back to some assemblance of normality. Maybe I can blog again. Anywayz, with the kids sitting out in front of the FutureShop the other morning (all night other morning) people at work asked me if I had already secured my PS3 and I laughed (like i have the money) because I knew it was really about the release of the Wii; that is where all the real hype is. Sorry Sony.

They use a frickin' sharpie to write Your Name On Toast ?!?! How wasteful; I was hoping for editable toasting technology like the imprints of Hello Kitty. (thanx jer)

5. These sites are so easy, my mother could use them. And they're so geeky, she has no interest in even trying.

You know, I used to think it was just because being out of the loop I didn't get things as much anymore. I still don't have a good need for most social apps and find that they are just based on self grandeuring... but that is probably the point. Yes they are The Top 10 Lies of Web 2.0. (via ed)

In days past, when I encountered a computer problem, I would research the bugger, find the solution and then overcome the situation. I would feel accomplished and proud of myself as I have often been the rely-on-someone-else kind of person when it comes to fixing things. So for years, I was happy to have a problem just to be able to solve it; probably why I did well at Help Desk.

But now I take it all personally, and rather irrationally. Last night the video drivers corrupted. In the middle of an intended 30 minute WoW run to try out a new mace that Marmy mailed to me (i LOVE that idea of mailing items and money to characters), the monitor just blinked and said, "Out of Frequency". Huh? Rebooted and got the same thing. Rebooted to Safe Mode and saw everything was fine. Updated video drivers and the same thing. Deleted video drivers, all reference to video cards and rebooted -- 640 x 480 and 4bit colour. One more time, with a reinstall of DirectX and everything was back to normal. Rebooting is a pain right now as the change in harddrive is causing a long pause as it autodetects it as IDE One.

I will have to research that but right now I am tired of computer woes. Marmy's pooter is still in Limbo, having not heard a thing, and I just want things back to normal. My emotional response to all of this is resentment. Why are they both doing this to me? I have been good to my computers with regular upgrades and fresh installs and cleaning. I keep the cat hair to a minimum and make sure virus software and spyware detection is recent. I run a clean ship. So, why so many woes in a short period of time? The only answer is that someone/something wants me to not play as many computer games. Lessen the stress in other areas of my life and that might happen by default. Maybe. November 10 06

To give myself a reprieve from computer woes, I decided to use the 250 gig HD I bought a few weeks ago, before the troubles, when I noticed I needed a bigger OS drive, having contemplated adding WoW to my short list of games. Last night I DLed a copy of Norton Ghost and recreated my main OS drive onto the 250giger. My reboot is weirdly slower, a long pause in the BIOS when finding the USB Mouse, but everything booted fine. Now how's this for weird? The noisy noisy fan I heard in the pooter, that you could hear all the way into the bedroom even with the case closed, was the original OS harddisk. This new one is quiet as a baby making me notice exactly how loud my mouse is when clicking. November 08 06

OMFG !! What is happening with my computer karma? The drive I considered my workhorse, the Quantum Fireball I had since I bought a real computer in Montreal (my first decent one since my first 286), the one I used for ALL my data (internet work, photos, etc.) died this afternoon. After I had installed the new power supply, I started to reassemble and I couldn't get the MB to recognize anything but the main HD. After a bit of cable pulling I found the DVD-RW could work if the secondary HD (the toasty data one) was pulled. A bit more experimentation and I found it wasn't even being recognized as there; poof it was gone. Worked last night no problem, and gone this morning. Oh well, gone is a month's worth of photos (i backed up a month ago burning all photos to my CD-ROMs) and any recent Internet Work. Yeah, that means yours Joanie. All the D&D stuff I did recently is also gone. Crap. Crapola. Fucking cruck buckets.

Addendum: When Backing Up, backup EVERYTHING !! Don't assume that you can backup only the things you don't use often and the good things, regularly used things like all your D&D written material, will stay active on your 6 year old HD. I am sorta shell shocked; I have lost 6 years of written material, images, maps, characters, etc. When I have a non-traumatized moment I need to hunt through a couple of dozen disks and see if one has any of the previous years' worth of writing.

Anyone know any cheap data recovery companies? November 07 06

Geez. My computer's power supply is now flaking out. One cable had a faulty connector which could be ignored as long as I didn't shake the computer but now I can hear the power supply fans stuttering which freezes the pooter solid. Tell me, does anything last these days? This is the NEW power supply probably only a year old. November 07 06

When I was 12 I had a length of chain spot-welded to my right wrist. The other boys were doing, older brothers and fathers running the spot welders, and the inevitable burn mark was a badge of honour. Once attached you could not remove the chain. Mine snapped off on a ski lift in Quebec as I exited the chair, a single link breaking and dropping it far below. In college there were those woven friendship bracelets, a copper-tin woven metal ring traded to a friend by a pickpocket in Nairobi, a couple of leather twists and the longest lasting ones -- the links used to hold shower curtains back wrapped multiply around my right wrist. I broke the last one months and months ago and even now my wrist feels naked. Perhaps this american gulag bracelet could be my next?

I used to think that being an artist required some great skill at the creative arts like painting, drawing, sculpture, etc. And I used to think that the artists who didn't have those were just wannabe shams. All that from observing an art college. Anywayz, I have changed my mind and I realized that even more important than the skillz required is the ability to think outside the canvas. I love the thought behind the Parking art, especially the japanese one. It's almost as if you, the viewer, would stand in the featureless landscape and look into the attraction parking spot while those parked in the attraction would look out at the featureless landscape.

I think this artist with an inflatable studio to share is an amusing project / artistic endeavour. The question is, " What kind of work are they going to do inside the bubble?" I imagine his work is just having the bubble installed but if their work involved ignoring him in order to get their work done, would he be annoyed?

I want to have the city drawing memory of Stephen Wiltshire, such as when he draws Rome from memory, but I want to draw massive imaginary cities. Imagine detailed renditions of Minas Tirith or D&D cities complete with taverns, Inns, gallows, barracks, etc.

I think this souvenirs photoset on Flickr is brilliant and I would like to propose we Canadians do a similar one, one where we take pictures of the souvenir next to a real object next to the giant version of an object. For example, on the highway between here and Montreal is a Giant Apple. We should hold an apple next to a keychain apple next to the Giant Apple. Since most Giant X are animals, it might be more difficult.

In case you are wondering where I am in, all four of you, I am still here just sort of wrapped up in my own little blanket of stress, one of my own making. I fucked Marmy's pooter. I don't know what I did but it went from the bad HD problems to not even posting -- no beeps, no video, no nuttin -- just spinning fans and that was about it. So I assumed I somehow fried one of the following: motherboard, CPU or power supply. I don't have the facilities to test any of the above for life so I dropped it off last night at the shop we bought all the parts. They are in the middle of a mass build so I won't see the computer back until a week or two.

I feel real guilty and ticked off at myself at not only wrecking her pooter but saddling her with my own reactive stress. I really fly off the handle when I realize I fucked something royally; it carries in my body language and tone. And I cannot accomplish anything else until I fix the situation. I am also so disappointed that I wasted my birthday weekend by swearing at a computer, watching unsuccessful reinstalls pass by and searching the net for assistance. In response, for the past week or so I have been sitting on the sofa moping with a few hours here and there checking out the possibilities in World of Warcraft -- oh, and I continued my CSI watching, the obsession that started when I was ill. And I have been working -- the only time that work is an escape from my head. Being pissed off at unreasonable wealthy people is weirdly therapeutic.

Wow looks like it can be fun. Unlike CoH it really stressed the RPGing capabilities of a fantasy world allowing you to even game on servers where the GMs force you to act in character. I like that though it could get a little tiring. I really really want to play with Marmy but that will have to wait. In the meantime she is exploring during the hours I am at work, and being hassled by geeks-seeking-GFs already. I am also hunting down community sites as unlike in CoH where I like playing it straight forwardly, I am interested in the nuances to this game. We shall see.

In the meantime all else has fallen to the wayside. The photoblog is sorely lacking and my intended Project 365, that was to start on my birthday, died in it's cradle. The plan is to get the computer back and get my life back. I am trying to convince my psyche that life can leak in around that goal but so far, no luck. November 02 06