our corner

There was a brief ski attempt this past Saturday. And by brief I mean 2 runs brief.

Lianne and I went up with her company to Mt Washington for the day, but upon arrival the weather was garbage. The mountain was all ice, the precipitation included RAIN, fog decided to grace us with its presence and the two main chair lifts closed. Blehck!

So, beer beer beer =) Stating it off at 11am (ohhh yeah), Lianne and I went up to the cafeteria and took a 2hr nap until the bus was supposed to leave. At least we got a refund...

Incase you don't know, it's crazy busy family time now My bro Pete flew in from Germany to visit and celebrate both my mom and dad's bday. Poppa Mueller turned the big 70, and is STILL rockin' it. There was food. A few beers and saki mixed in. Some family trivial pursuit and a general good time!

Pop quiz. What does $320 buy you from UVic? The privilege of driving around Lot 1 for 25 minutes looking for a damn parking spot!

Today I rolled onto campus at a cool 11am, thinking I'd just snipe to the back row and get me a parking spot. Little did I realize that the back row was completely full. Not only that, but there were about 10 other hopeless frustrated souls looking to snipe a spot. My usual trick of waiting near the parking lot entrance and following a person to their car didn't work at all - there was nobody heading back to their cars. I then realized the err in my ways. Today was Tuesday, a day which UVic mainly offers hour long classes starting at 8:30. There would be no student following until about 11:30 when the stragglers made it outside of the ring. So instead of driving around for any longer, I pulled into a reserved spot, turned off my car and read a futureshop flyer and drank my timmy's coffee. The first wave of drivers proved fruitful, and I found a spot in about a minute.

Good thing they didn't oversell those parking passes, reduce the reserved parking lots, and chopped a good chunk of lot 1 into residence passes only. Because you know, the reason people live on res is because they have a car.

Well, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all.

Appearently I've been a bit busy with life 'n such...which directly translates into busy with WoW and shopping! Christmas this year was awesome, the whole family (except Pete ) were all over for Christmas eats and fun. Hat's off to Heidi and me mother for the amazing food; I think I gained 5lbs on chocolate alone! Post Christmas, I tagged along with Lianne's family down to Portland for TAX FREE SHOPPING AND EATS! Yeah, it was amazing. We both spent our limits (and some!) within the first day. I'm such a sucker for shoes (how metro of me I know).

Last but not least, rocking out a LANage lan. We spent 4 days (that's right four!) at Brian's place playing ET, Quake3, Warcraft3 and most importantly, Armegatron - which is simply the best written quick 'n dirty LAN game ever. If you've never seen the movie Tron (shame on you!), watch this 80's classic first, then download it. Simple buttons and fun to play.

And finally here I am back in the lab working on Brimpy. I thought I was done, but appearently not. My mission is to get the sonars working reliable in an RTOS...for anybody who cares I'll keep you updated

Btw, WoW auction house is sooo addicting.

So my hopes of capitalistic grandeur from selling a PS3 have withered into the pipe dream it really was. Basically, I made 30 freakin' dollars once all the shipping/eBay/PayPal fees were subtracted. Woopdi freakin do. I guess people are coming around and realizing that the Wii is way better than anything Sony has to offer. The PS3 has basically turned into an expensive boat anchor. Here, let me make a list of recent reasons why I now hate Sony (more):

CD Rootkits
PSP viral ad. scandal
PS3
Bluray
Sony Ericsson phones
Betamax


Ok, I'm done here.

I think it may be time to sleep. The last few nights have been spent rockin' out p4x (level 42) riddles and WoW (level 9). Between those two narcotics and Nintendo gaming (go Donkey Konga!), I have very little time to get anything else done. Eeek! I need to get my butt to school and finish this dang blimp project.

3am bedtimes are killing me.

So last night, just before I was about to go to bed, Lianne sends me this link. A harmless little link. Rather short in length, a foreign extension. Sure, I'll click this link.

What was so exciting about this link that would make me want to talk about it here you may ask? IT'S THE MOST ADDICTING GAME ON THE PLANET.

Go ahead, CLICK!

This series of riddles is fantastic, and is easily more addicting than WoW. I've wasted nearly 7hrs of my life, and see no end to it. Level 27 as of this writing....argh!

Yup, I am holding one right now! (Well, it's on the floor...if I was holding it that'd be pretty creepy!)

So, time to wait a little bit longer for Christmas to near, then eBay time. Come on PS3, get me through college

Should Windows be renamed to Windoesn't? Let us begin.

Last weekend I went over to Vancouver to meet up with fellow supra nuts, shoot the shit, and buy some computer parts. I thought it would be a good idea to finally get a new hard drive. I mean, I've got a pretty nice 10k RPM scsi drive, but it's loud. Lately, I'm all about quiet so that sleepy time is not interrupted by my computer. I was ready for the quiet setup, but was missing the HD, 92mm fan, and video card fan. If you've never heard a SCSI drive before picture this - two walnuts being ground together. It's loud! Secondly, I needed an intake fan to blow cool air over the drive to keep it cool. The fan I had was an older Coolermaster fan which is well, awful. And last but certainly the MOST annoying loud is the fan on the video card. This thing was on its way out so I figured hey, let's buy a replacement.

So I get back from Vancouver with a new 320GB Seagate SATA drive, a 92mm Antec fan, and a new 18x DVD burner. I'm stoked - I love goodies

Being an experienced computer nerd, and having dealt with SATA many many times before I knew full well that Windows is the suck. You'd think that by SP2, the ISO's would at least contain SATA drivers for some of the more common chipsets. Negative. So I booted up the Win98 box, downloaded the drivers from the ASUS website and threw it on a diskette. Ripped out that diskette drive, put it in my machine and booted up the XP setup. I get as far as "Loading driver SIL3802" or whatever when the install complains about missing a .sys file. Well I says, wtf is up with that? I take the disk drive out of the system, back into Win98 box and download a different version. Inside this zip, there are no .sys files...wtf? I go to the Silicon Image website and grab their newest version...ok .sys on their tarball. Throw it on the diskette, repeat the process and load the driver. I get to the point during the install where you select your target drives...NOTHING THERE! Oh, I'ma feisty now.

Finally I discovered that my Win98 box is fracked. It wasn't untaring all the files correctly and neglected to even mention anything of the sort. After booting a Gentoo install disk, I use links to download from the asus website, untar, mount the diskette and copy the files. Back into the XP setup and all is well.

Sorta...

Ok, so I now have a fresh install of XP on my SATA drive, but I'd like to get all my data off of my SCSI drive. Apparently neither Windoesn't nor Grub has ANY idea wtf to do about this situation. As soon as both drives are plugged in, I cannot boot from either drive. I tried running the XP recovery console, fixing the MBR...no dice. Every possible combination of BIOS settings...nope. Evnentually I just plugged the damn thing into my Linux server and copied over the network.

What a pain in the ass. And on top of it all, my new DVD burner doesn't even fit inside my Antec P150 case. The pretty little CD-ROM covers are just a bit too small for the CD try to go through...grawrrr!

Well I attempted to get a Playstation 3 at launch, but no dice. This all started a few weeks ago when after doing some research I realized the absolute potential that these units had. The potential to sell like CRAZY on eBay. I really could care less about console gaming, and am definately not willing to spend hundreds of dollars to sit in front of a TV. Ok so maybe I do enjoy the occaisonal game, but not enough to warrent buying a system for myself.

Then here comes the PS3. Can you believe that these systems sell for $660? Holy moly! I'm fairly certain that kids these days cannot even come close to earning that kind of money mowing lawns or delivering papers. So who is the target demographic? ME! That's right, the Nintendo generation has matured into consumer whores, and we LOVE our stuff. I love to buy stuff too, but these days it hasn't been techy. I know people want these things, I know there is a huge supply shortage, and I know rich people will pay ludacrous amounts of money for 'em. Here in starts my adventure.

After calling around many stores on the Wednesday before launch, I got a good idea of how many each store had recieved. Brian also did some recon work, and talked to a delivery guy...So we knew where they were going. Thursday morning I went to Futureshop in Langford to get a rundown from their manager. I couldn't find 'em, so I talked to the nearest cashier. She wasn't entirely all that useful but mentioned that they were definately getting less than 20. I figure, 10-15 would be a good number, considering Futureshop nationwide was allocated 1500 units. After some quick counting and poking around the FS website, there were 121 locations So my 10-15 estimate was bang on.

On my way out of the store I see 6 kids already outside waiting in the PS3 line. Appearently those nuts were there all night already. Gross.

I then boogied down to London Drugs and talked to the techs there. They hadn't got their shipment in yet, but figured they would get 4. The London Drugs on Quadra got that #, so this seemed accurate. Now what to do? Well I did as my heart said and drove to UVic to work on assignments

Later that night I discovered that Futureshop was posting an exact # of units. My drive down there right at closing proved they only had 10 units. Ok crap'en cakes - there are 12 people already staked out for the night! Well I decided there is no sense staying over night there. I went down to London Drugs, they got 5. Oh MAN there were already 8 people outside. Didn't look like all of them were staying over night, but 5 of them sure did. So poop, I guess my only chance of getting one would be to try costco. Appearently in the states they each got a few, so why not. I drove to costco to find NOBODY there! Wow, things were looking up...but if there was nobody there by 11pm, why would there be anybody there at 6am?

So alarm goes off at 6 am and I get my ass down to FS for opening at 8. I stand inline as "guy # 11". I was hoping so bad that somebody's credit card didn't go through. Unfortunately I was in a lineup of nerds with excellent credit.

London drugs opened at 9, so I attempted the same thing. Nope...Although 1 guy offered to sell me his "voucher" for a couple hundred bucks. I could've done that, but then again my capitalist ebay plan would have 200 bucks on the line. Nah, I drive a 500 dollar beater for a reason.

Last stop, Costco. I get there and some dude in a truck had pulled right in front of the main doors. So I'm guy # 2! WOOT, heck yeah I'm going to get one! So i sit there from about 8:40 ish to just before 10...Then some costco employee comes out

"What are you guys doing?"
"We WANTS PLAYSTATIONS!!"
"We don't have any"

Dammit.

So I go home, tail between my legs and crawl back in bed.

Maybe I should try and get a Wii...

This movie made my sides hurt. I think what I liked most about this movie was its no holds barred attitude. Straight up humor, the whole time. Some of the shit that Borat pulls are absolutely priceless...bringing back a bag of shit to an "up class" dinner party table? Naked wrestling for nearly 10 straight minutes? Pulling a marriage sack over Pamela Anderson's head...oh emmm efff geee is all I have to say. If you havn't seen this movie yet, you need to. =)

Well, if all goes well, a new fuel pump for White Rice is on the way. So what does this mean to the average joe? Nothing really, it's just a pump that will be able to handle bigger injectors. And what does THAT mean, well if you don't know then you're not a car person

ooo, phallic

Yeah, exactly. wtf?! I was half asleep this morning, munchin' down on my morning cereal when I just about slammed back a latex finger. Ok, so it wasn't a human finger - just the glove but still! G-ROSS.

I guess that's what I get for eating no-name brand cherios.

latex finger

Yup, that's the name of my car. My current obsession is with my 1987 Supra Turbo. It's very slick, and well, fast too.

A brief history of the car:

I bought the car in November 2004 from an older chap who worked walking distance from his work. He only drove the car on weekends and it was in a garage its entire life. Yup, the thing is an absolute gem. I bought her with only 100,000km on the clock, and have since done a few tasteful (at least I think so) modifications. You know, being 23 you gotta have sweet rims, lots of power and all the fixings. So as it stands, White Rice has work done to her intake, turbo, timing, exhaust and tuned via a piggy back computer. Dyno'ing in at 309hp, I'm pretty happy

So what's in store for White Rice now? Well, she's parked under a portable car garage out at my sister's place. During the winter I plan on upgrading a few parts, but at the very least I must redo the clutch, valve cover gaskets and valve stem seals. If all goes well, and deals are to be had - turbo, injectors, fuel pump, fuel pressure regulator, intercooler and piping and new head gasket...to name a few

Many years have passed since I've "blogged"...heck I was ranting over the interweb long before "blogging" was the in thing to do. What stopped it all you may ask? Well, I got hacked not once, nor twice... neh! THRICE. Sure I guess it was my fault for using php-nuke and not constantly upgrading that security hole but I ran out of patience and time - school was in full swing.

Well here I am, I'm back and only a little older. So what's new since my last post on mordor over 2 years ago? Well, for starters I've graduated from engineering, got really into cars, and started my Masters degree at UVic. There's a ton of other crap but whatevs, those who know me IRL know wtf I've been up to.

I'm going to try and dig up all the old posts from both mordor and my europe site and put them in an archive section.