Posts

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When it rains, it pours

  1. My main system motherboard died. Luckily a friend was able to provide a replacement free of charge. That helped a whole lot.
  2. My server, known as Yes, developed a weird problem where transferring files via samba over the local network caused it to reset itself. I still havn’t figured that one out. Probably motherboard related.
  3. Listener’s desktop had bad memory. Luckily memtest86 found the problem quickly and I think that was a problem that had been causing her trouble for a long time.
  4. The forums machine I run for Guardians of Valor started flooding the network like crazy. New network card and that seems to be fixed.
  5. My monitor died.

None of those are horrible disasters, but they came right after each other. And all of that outside of work. What a week for computer problems.

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Death of a motherboard

My main gaming system stopped working tonight. I was playing WoW and the screen went black and dead. No errors, nothing. This was an Epox EP-8RDA+ and had been an awesome motherboard for over a year. So, I need to find a new one as soon as possible.

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World of Warcraft

Mail. This one little thing in WoW really has made items less of an albatross around my neck. I can chuck an item, keep it, or sent it to someone who might need it. No more hanging on to bags full of equipment and items, wondering when I’ll meet someone to hand it off to them. Swing by an inn and drop it in the mail. I think it’s the little improvements that can make a game enjoyable versus tolerable.

I also find the crafting aspect of WoW to be very easy to deal with. The interface makes fabrication very smooth and easy to work with. You aren’t fumbling with buttons or items or anything. Most of WoW has this same interface smoothness that makes the game very easy to work with. I do think that the screen real estate is the most limiting aspect of the interface and Blizzard did not want to clutter it up with more buttons. But, I would expect that most people will add user interface modifications to change that.

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The Incredibles

Wow. This has to be one of the all time best super-hero movies. It is a fantastic movie. I really can not find fault with any aspect of this movie. The acting, the animation, and the story are all top notch and very entertaining. While I’de like to see more of this movie, I find it hard to imagine a sequal that would be able to match the impact of this movie. It’s that good.

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Biking Exploration

This weekend I managed to ride Hog Run again, check out some of the American Tobacco Trail, and give the Garner trails a look.

Hog Run is, so far, the best place to ride single-track in the area. The graduation from beginner trail up to advanced is well defined and fits those descriptions properly. There is no doubt in my mind that if you want to start riding off road and have never done that before, Hog Run is the place to start. Listener, gore, and I went riding there on Saturday and had good few hours of riding.

Sunday was more adventurous. Gore and I struck out to check out the American Tobacco Trail. We visited the Wake county portion that is around three miles long. The path is not unlike Umstead in that it’s mostly crushed gravel. But, due to heavy horse use, the surace is rough. We flew up and down the three mile stretch in no time despite the constant jarring surface. It’s really is a peaceful, serene envornment to ride through.

We moved on from there to the Garner trails. The parking lot was dead, and we didn’t see anyone else out there at all. From what I could tell, these trails run from intermediate to advanced. I never got my stride in these trails and no maps made the navigation very difficult. The constant twisted back and forth and the trails seeming to overlap made it easy to get confused.

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More Hog Run

Saturday I rode more Hog Run. I didn’t have as much time as I would have liked, but I got a good hour or so in. The trails there are just exceptional and well maintained. I still need to get the front wheel on my bike re-trued. A few too many whacks to some roots.

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Snopes

Snopes is an awesome web site. It’s not unlike FactCheck but with less of a topic focus. Myths, wives tales, urban legends, it’s all here and debunked for the most part. I’ve been spending far too much time here.

The forums are really where the meat of this site resides in my opinion. But after reading most new stuff regarding urban legends and the like, I noticed that hardly any new posts came up. At least, it was a relativly slow trickle of posting going on. Seemed kind of odd. Then I noticed that most of the more intense posting was occuring farther down the forum list in the SLC area. I don’t even know what “SLC” stands for, but this is more like normal forums. I find it a little funny because even the layout of the page seems to lend itself to the concept of a group of animals congregating at the bottom of a lake, rising to the surface occasionally to feast on a new post in the urban legend forums above.

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Hog Run

Having just recently get into the mountain bike scene, I had only ridden Umstead and Crabtree. And Crabtree not as much as I’de like. Gore and I struck out for Harris Lake to try Hog Run. The beginner section is very nice and easy. It’s a great run for anyone, and you can get some good speed on it. Intermediate and advanced were also pretty fun and a good workout. Advanced was a little much for me with the constant up and down some pretty good hills. I think the killer for me was large roots or logs on uphill runs. It was a very satisfying run.

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War

The “war” on drugs.
The “war” on crime.
The “war” on terrorism.
The “war” on piracy.
The “war” on spam.

Is there a thing that can’t be fought in the context of a war anymore? Concise wording has been replaced by sensationalistic hyperbole as the norm, it seems. Many of the words used in english to describe a struggle against something are just words about physical conflict. Words like ‘struggle’, or ‘fight’, or ‘resist’. The obvious penultimate physical conflict being war. If you aren’t fighting a war against something, you must not really be opposed to it. Or so the government (past and present administrations included) would have us believe. Politics in the US are extremely polarized. Issues are portrayed in black and white with each side having their own laundry lists of supporting evidence. No one will look for ways to reduce crime. Not when you can wage war on it. Anything less would be inadequate for todays extreme politics.

The concept that war is the answer to everything that we don’t like in society is insane. Can we wage war on poverty? What about healthcare problems? How about war on drunk driving? Or maybe war on AIDS? War on war?

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Crabtree

Listener and I rode some Umstead yesterday afternoon. Then I went on to ride all of Crabtree with gore. It was a pretty long day of riding for me and I really enjoyed getting into the woods on some single-track. This was really my first time out onto something more difficult than hills in Umstead and I was surprised at how enjoyable it was. Even when the burn came on going up a hill, it felt good to reach the top and keep riding the path.