irrelevancy

I put up a new gallery with pictures from Arizona, posts to follow.

Thanksgiving in Arizona

Had a good, mildly frustrating trip to Michigan over the weekend. Off to Arizona in a few hours to spend Thanksgiving with my grandparents (party time). I guess I’m the only family member who hasn’t gone to stay with them yet. Just been so busy with school and seriously, they’re out here about three times a year. I think my grandmother just wants me out there to fix her PC.

I get out of work a couple hours before class, usually hanging around school doing some homework or port-scanning the network, and was sitting in the Mac lab (that’s where my Tuesday night class is). There was a sort of midterm paper due last week, so there were still some people that needed printing done and today’s assignment required Internet access.

While I was happily surfing the Web, the two Windows laptops I noticed had trouble connecting to the network, their owners leaving early out of frustration. I haven’t seen many people still running Vista on their new laptops, but I know our CSA (Campus System Administrator) advises not to use Vista as it’s a pain to connect to the wireless network.

Some people had written their papers in Word, which the Macs had trouble recognizing, trying to open it in iOffice or whatever the Mac suite is called instead of the installed MS Office. Some people had written their papers in Word ’07, which is not supported on any computer in the school (why do people refer to .doc as a “standard”?). I don’t know where the error was, but there wasn’t any printing going on from any Macs. I know some of the Windows labs won’t print at all, having mis-configured printers and/or some sort of permission issues.

For today we (the team leaders) had to create a document to present to the teacher. Everyone else had to write them by hand. Mine printed fine. I counted 4 (of 9) people that were interested in getting a laptop to run Ubuntu by the end of the night. As a classmate who recently found out about Linux says, “why the hell is everyone still using Windows?”

And so it is written, I am the Greek god of pool, Billiardysus. My cue stick is forged from the bones of the fallen. My reign is unceasing. Mortals challenge me merely to bask in my magnificence. When I am thirsty, I will allow you to play, for I am a merciful god. When I tire of domination, I will wait for you to lose, for I am a patient god.

Billiardysus must slumber.

On LugRadio there was a segment on machinima, featuring a full-length version of BloodSpell.

I’ve only seen a few seasons of Red vs Blue and a few shorts of amateur quality, but I really enjoyed BloodSpell, made with Neverwinter Nights. The story was very interesting and I liked a lot of the cinematography. Some of the music was fantastic. Definitely worth a watch.