Diary of a Wolfeman

Or, “The Trials and Tribulations of Buying Online”

For weeks now, I have been hungrilly searching through the inventoru at NewEgg, cobling together the list of parts that would eventually become my latest computer build. I’ve probably spent about 6 hours on this since January.

One thing about me though, is that I am impatient. When my tax refund arrived on Friday, there was now way in hell I was going to wait another two days for shipping, and then probably until the end of the week before I could actually meld thos parts together into a computer. Saturday morning, I went to Fry’s.

The problem with having spent so much time getting the perfect list of parts and then going to another store is not always finding what you spec’d out. I think the only two things on the original list that made it into the final build are the processor and the MP3 player I wanted. The rest is “close enough”. Here’s what actually made it into ‘Hyperion’:

Antec tower case (I wanted a Centurion, but they didn’t have the no-psu model, and I wasn’t going to pay $40 for a psu I was going to throw away)
Antec SmartPower 500W modular psu (spec was 450W, got this for the same price)
AMD 3700+ 64-bit proc
ECS nForce4 motherboard (spec was an MSI model)
2Gb PC2100 RAM (1 gig from the old box, another gig I had lying around without enough motherboard slots)
eVGA 256 Mb GeForce 6600 PCI-E video (this change was good – it turns out the eVGA 6800XT board I saw at NewEgg is a typo and doesn’t exist)
a pair of Maxtor 100Gb SATA drives in swap bays (spec was Western Digital 40 Gb SATA, which they were out of; these were 15$ more each)
Creative Zen Micro 6Gb MP3 player. (Ok, not a computer part, but damn cool anyway :) )

This is my first time really playing around with a 64-bit processor, and so far I am mightily impressed by the speed. I’m used to having to wait a tick or three when I click on an icon, but the AMD 3700+ reacts almost instantly. OpenOffice.org Calc opens in less than four seconds – without the quickstarter. Firefox in less than two! I can’t wait until I get some time to install Kubuntu’s 64-bit edition.

Ahh….new computer bliss ;)

To answer B’s question about why the commenters don’t get a rich text editor: because it doesn’t work as well.

It turns out that the thing is slow to respond, so if you hold down the backspace key or something, it doesn’t always stop where you want it to. This means us lousy typists end up spending a lot more time correcting typos.

It also makes any cut-and-paste operation twice as long, since you will have to go back and edit the HTML to fix the tags it breaks.

So, it’s easier to use the old editor – at least for me. You can turn the RT editor off in the “Options – Writing” pane.

Ok, Greyduck got me thinking it was time to upgrade to the WordPress version 2.0, so I have done so. As a part of this, I am trying a new and (what appears to be) better spam killer. Please email me if your comments disappear.

*Update*

Well, for those of you who have been thinking about trying out the new version, I can tell you this is pretty damn cool! There are a number of improvements in the writing interface, most notable a mini rich-text editor that allows you to write posts without worrying about all the tags. Simple keyboard shortcuts turn bold, italics and strikethrough on and off. (There is no longer an underline option, but in web-text, I suppose that makes sense.) Should you need it, there is a button that launches a sub-window with all the bare HTML for direct editing.

Other text-formatting tools include easy bullet-points and lists, an undo/redo option, and text justification. Not so easy are the new hyperlink tools, which only become available after you have highlighted the text you want to link. It does now give you the option of specifying a new window for the link, however. I think I liked the old one better.

The “more” tag still links to the single-page-post view, but there is a plugin to make it simply expand the post in the current page – I’ll play with that later. Another plugin I will be playing with is an automated acronym-replacement widget. Very handy for those of us using acronyms to refer to people. Not so handy …

For those who are more aesthetically-inclined, one of the final and cooler features of the new writing interface is the “live preview”. Previously, in the advenced edit mode, you could see the basic paragraphical layout at the bottom of the writing page; in V2, the preview pane displays it with your theme, so you get a better idea of what the finished product will be. Very handy when you are trying to get images lined up.

Well, that’s about it for now. Maybe more next post if stuff blows up.

Link purloined from Slasdot:
Scotsman.com News – Sci-Tech – Welcome to Mars express: only a three hour trip

AN EXTRAORDINARY “hyperspace” engine that could make interstellar space travel a reality by flying into other dimensions is being investigated by the United States government.

The hypothetical device, which has been outlined in principle but is based on a controversial theory about the fabric of the universe, could potentially allow a spacecraft to travel to Mars in three hours and journey to a star 11 light years away in just 80 days, according to a report in today’s New Scientist magazine.

Considering how much sci-fi we watch, read and play around here, you can bet that a discussion has cropped up on several occasions regarding the possibility of Faster-Than-Light travel. Also considering that at least two of our regulars have spent serious amounts of time and effort understanding theoretical physics, you can guess that these have been extensive. Current ‘theory’, as applied to a role-playing game, is that FTL is possible, but the craft in question would need to come to a complete halt before engaging these drives, as the “hyperspace” it jumps into is extremely volotile, and momentum adds tons of uncertainty to initial navigation.

I should have thrown a “boring!” warning in at the front of this, eh?

Anyway, me being the fiendish fan of Space Opera that I am, this goes completely against my instincts. The idea of outrunning your pursuers long enough to get a good exit vector before applying that extra bit of thrust and kicking in the hyperdrives to escape pursuit is a long-standing tactic. Having to somehow get enough time together to drag the ship to a standstill is just…just wrong, you know?

“Ensign! Park this bucket so we can get the hell out of here!”
“Sorry, Sir – it’s lunch hour and the only space I can find is a loading zone!”

Okay, back to the article. How does the thing work?

The theoretical engine works by creating an intense magnetic field that, according to ideas first developed by the late scientist Burkhard Heim in the 1950s, would produce a gravitational field and result in thrust for a spacecraft.

Basically, (as I understand it – B will probably correct me) you project a magnetic field large enough and powerful enough to ‘attract’ your ship. Since the ship is projecting the field, though, it remains a constant distance, and you accelerate perpetually. You put out a big enough field, and you can eventually get moving right along.

Make that field even larger, and you may be able to ‘warp’ space-time enough to slip into another dimension – one where the speed of light is much higher than in our own. Einstein’s theories state that as an object approaches the speed of light, it’s mass will increase proportionally – so much so that it would take nearly all the available energy of the universe to accelerate a truck to c. Well, if light travelled faster, that would give you more legroom on the speedometer, right?

Well, however the theory goes, if it works I will dance a frigging jig. Good luck, boys!

Google, the penultimate search engine, has been dipping it’s toes in many varied waters recently, as you all know. One of the more useful to me has been Google Maps, which I use every day to find where many of my customers live. Today, they released the beta for Google Transit, a service to help you plot a path on public transport to your destination.

This is really a happy mash-up between Maps and your local transit provider’s schedules and route maps. Enter a starting point and destination, it gives you a route and several time options. Add an ETA to your query, and it will give you more narrow results based on that. A truly nifty idea.

The best part is that our beloved Portland is the first city to get the service. Go Portland! I’m guessing this is primarily because our transit system rocketh mightily, and Tri-Met already had a ton of info available on the ‘Net.

Of course, there is going to be the oddball thing showing up. In looking up Tri-Met’s website just now, I find the following:

It all started on the bus

Fifty years ago, Rosa Parks (1913–2005) was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. TriMet is commemorating this historic event and Rosa Parks’ legacy.

Bus service changes effective Dec. 4

Schedules were adjusted on 8 bus lines as of Sunday, December 4. Line 83-Park Blocks was discontinued.

Whoops!

Ok, this is obviously just one of those unhappy coincidences – line 83 wasn’t getting enough riders to justify the expense, and it just happens to go through the Park Blocks, and Rosa’s last name just happens to be Parks.

Timing is everything.

Take 1 Honey Baked Ham, add mashed taters and yams, garnish with fresh-made cranberry sauce. Fresh veggies with ranch dip for appetizers.

Blow shit up on your computers for next three hours.

Ahh. Sunday afternoon happiness.

This is our second run with the new MekTek 3.0 patch, which was raised to bugfix version 3.0.1 recently. Changes include Inner Sphere weapons getting shorter reload times to offset the extra tonnage.

New weapons include a massive railgun, which takes up 7 slots of space – currently, there are only two mechs that can mount it: the Behemoth II and the Marauder II. The gun rides as a dorsal mount, and does 56 damage every 10 seconds. If used properly, it will knock down an Atlas.

Muahahahahaha!

For those who like energy mounts to go with your insanely overpowered ballistics, take the Behemoth. For bullet-gunners like myself, you’ll prefer the Marauder.

Other changes include a new variation on the Omni weapon mount: the “Direct-Fire” slot, which will take any non-missile weapon. This breathes a little new life into several mechs I had not looked at before. (I hate trying to manage heat, I just want something to go boom whenever I pull the trigger.)

Some of the new ‘Mechs don’t really even qualify as ‘Mechs – I’m talking about the Elementals. This patch brings out a dozen or so Battle Armors, with a new bunch of weapons to outfit them with. Want a challenge? Take six of these out against a pair of assault ‘Mechs. It gets messy, since these guys tip the scales at a measly 20 tons, and can be squished like tanks.

In all, three hearty cheers to the fine folks over at MekTek for continuing to provide excellent content and variations to a solid game. And they do it for FREE! You – go donate now!

So, Saturday morning up at dawn to drive up to Lakewood Washington (known for it’s ..umm… fog?) to “get the player tracking software installed and running.”

Yeah, right.

Bossman and I arrive at 9am to discover that the programmer who is doing this did not catch the flight last night due to ‘a problem with the plane’ and instead caught a morning flight. Okaaay…

So, we’re here, what’s the server doing? Been turned off because there was no reason to have it on for the last three months? Ok, that makes sense. How about the end terminals? Been turned off and stuffed into kiosks for a year-and-a-half because they bought them waaaay to soon? Okay, they’ll need updates then.

10am- Proggy rolls in. 11:30am- Proggy is finally ready for a meeting, but his laptop drive just kerplooied due to extreme age. That was his development environment. Casino manager takes this amazingly in stride. Break for grubbage.

12:30pm- Proggy decides that current network infrastructure has somehow been changed in ways he does not like, and we must re-arrange certain things to bring everything on to one network. Comes up with stupid reccomendation which we ignore, and simply install a second NIC on the server. *Poof*- Marketing now has access. And you were saying…?
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We have a dual monitor setup on our shop gaming rig, so people outside can see what cool things it can do. I go out for an after-lunch smoke, and wander over to see what mayhem KG is unleashing, only to see him going through his wardrobe in Matrix Online. I finally lean back in and yell at him.

ME- “Dude! Quit playing Pretty-Princess-Dress-Up and go splatter something already!” (KG is cross-dressing currently and playing a female character.)
KG- “I can’t!” He says, “I’ve got to go to an in-game wedding.”
ME- “You’re shitting me.”
KG- “No, my faction leader is getting hitched in twenty minutes.”
ME- “In-game.”
KG- “Yeah.”
ME- Blink. Blink. Blink.
KG- “I just hope the Bride doesn’t try to make me her Maid Of Honor.”

When do you leave good enough alone? Apparently, just before you try to add slick new themes to KDE.

I added Baghira to get a slick brushed-metal look to the top of all my windows, which somehow managed to disable about half of my widgets. A couple tries at re-installing Qt didn’t work. Then I noticed there was an update available for KDE. “That should fix that Qt problem…”
Not.

Next boot gave me really long KDE start-times followed by a complete lack of fonts.

Hrm.

So, do I try to remove then re-install KDE, or build it from scratch again?

Me? A glutton for punishment? Never!

Failure:
Tried to re-configure Earthlink dial-up on a G4 Mac today, and couldn’t get the damn thing to sync up to the server – it kept timing out before the connection was made, but would then continue connecting. Once connected, it wouldn’t let me try again until I had disconnected.

It’s been a long time since I have been that mad at a computer. I think I hate Macs. Sure they look pretty, but for someone like me who has spent years mastering Windoze, there are simply too many things in the wrong place. Then there is the really stupid shit: the CD eject button is on the keyboard, not the tower. (And of course the client had changed keyboards, and the new one did not have the media keys.)

Mastery:
I have mad KDE skillz. Kubunutu 5.10 had it’s chance, but it just wasn’t up to the task of running Rodimus Prime (my desktop, otherwise known as Hot Rod when it runs Windoze.)

So SuSE 10.0 went back in tonight, and I hamered it into the shape I wanted in short order. Tagline randomizer: check. Emails configured: check. Spam Assassin configured: check. Addressbook imported: check. Firefox extensions, themes and bookmarks: check. Multimedia fix: check. 3D acceleration: check. Audio: check.

At one point I had 7 windows open, with one of those being six tabs of Firefox. And it never slowed down. Yay Linux!