Year in Review

Wow, what a year 2008 was. If someone had told me 365 days ago, what was to come, I'd've thought they were crazy.

The year started off in my standard crunch time at work. I did manage to get in some Warmachine playing though and my Eldar Spirit Host arrived. Immediately following that, I went on a short business trip. Upon my return I was informed that my marriage was over (hence all of the songs of loss).

Thoughts of politics surrounded my brain during the election, but as many know, I'm happy at the results.

2008 saw the loss of Gary Gygax. His legacy lives on. We also lost the original pin-up girl, Bettie Page.

Finally disgusted with WH40k Tourneys, I decided to just play home games. I'm glad I made this decision. This meant I played in a map campaign, which was quite enjoyable.

The most momentous day in 2008 was April 22nd. I had started dance lessons (which I really enjoyed) but most importantly destiny led me to meet the woman who'd eventually become my "Trophy Girlfriend".

My schedule eventually settled into playing RPGs on Saturday night with a bunch of friends at my house and a few roadtrips in MY NEW CAR where I discovered "Chicken Fried Bacon".

I decided I didn't like D&D 4E but that I did like going to see Marcia Ball and Carolyn Wonderland at Blues on the Green (Looking forward to next summer's!)

I dropped cable and land-line phone in favor of RoadRunner Turbo and my spiffy iPhone.

I started running a D&D 3.5/Pathfinder campaign based in Sharn and learned about "Star Wars: The Old Republic" MMO and a "Star Trek" MMO.

And most recently, I traded off my Brettonians as I realized there was no way I could get them all painted. I'm thinking about what would be another better fitting Fantasy Army for me.

Most importantly, my Trophy Girlfriend is now my Trophy Fiancee.

My game posts dropped off some while I was working on my metaphysical reboot, but hopefully, I'll get back on track. My 27" LCD Monitor must not go to waste.

Hopefully, 2009 will be a bit calmer.

Warhammer Fantasy Army

A little known fact is that I actually had most of a Warhammer Fantasy Brettonian Army. Sadly, when I looked at the painting requirements of the army, I decided that I didn't enjoy painting enough to really warrant the amount of painting required for the army. So, I've traded them off for more marines...

This begs a question. Assuming I DO decide to assemble a WFB army (one that is easy to paint), What army should it be?

Currently, I'm leaning towards a Warriors of Chaos army as they remind me of Molly Hatchet album covers...

Other possibilities are Lizardmen, Tomb Kings, or Dark Elves.

Realizing I don't really care about competitiveness, I'm open to comments!

On Vacation starting tomorrow

Have yourself a happy holiday season!



(Maybe NSFW)

Farewell Bettie Page

As the HDD turns

So I decided to max out the RAM on my laptop this weekend...taking it to 2 Gigabytes of RAM.

Sounds easy right?

Well the first wrinkle is that it involved removing the keyboard. Of course, this wouldn't be a problem for a geek such as myself so I pulled out the screwdriver and 20 minutes later was booting up to 2 gig of RAM.

YAY....or so I thought.

Since then, the laptop has bluescreened several times.
I've swapped with known good ram, and still get blue screens.
I flashed the bios to the latest version, and still get blue screens.
I emptied the ram slot under the keybaord, it has blue screened.

*sigh*, I think my laptop is about to go to the computer lab in the sky...

For those who don't know, my real life/non gamer persona uses several computers as a Software Quality Engineer. My laptop isn't technically necessary, but it makes my life MUCH easier. I had been thinking about replacing my laptop maybe next year....I really wish I didn't have to do it now...

I want Linux....

I know people who are "Mac people" and I know people who are "Windows people". Despite how far both technologies have come, there is still the great divide that dates back to the days of EGA graphics. However, I was one of those "wierdos" who loved Unix. It's a wonderful and powerful OS. While I recognize that with the advent of Intel CPU Macintoshes, OS X is based on FreeBSD (a Unix variant), but the cost of proprietary hardware kinda bugs me. I love the weird hacker-esque command line arguments. I love the choice. I love the fact it's FREE. I love the fact that Linux acutally makes your PC use LESS electricity. I love that I can customize the OS compiles the way I want.

I really like Linux, but I find myself unable to run it because I have the following very key limitations in software availability.....

1. No Itunes for Linux - If I could get something to sync my iphone, I could make the jump on one of the PCs I use regularly (I use 3).
2. Support for Browsers other than IE or Safari - Netflix demands IE (and soon Safari). Because of this, I cannot use it on my HTPC (remember when I dropped cable? I pulled out an old disused PC and I stream TV shows on it).
   

If either of these two hurdles get surpassed, I can likely drop one of my Windows licenses.

Whenever time permits, I'm going to evaluate a couple of "Run Windows apps under Linux" programs, but it just seems silly to me. I don't WANT to keep sending money to Redmund.

Why does this HAVE to be so hard?!?!??!?!