Category Archives: Rant

Team Fortress 2, For Real This Time

Isn’t it amazing? It’s finally on its way, and a beta test on Monday? I think that’s too good to pass on. I’m not sure which game I’m more excited to play, but one thing is certain: I need some memory that doesn’t suck. I just RMA’d my super-sweet low latency RAM and got some other, slightly slower stuff back, and once again there’s something amiss with the second stick.

Why does this happen to me?

Update (9/18): TF2 is finally here!

The Hardware Fairy Giveth, The Hardware Fairy Taketh Away

I bought my MacBook Pro approximately three months ago, and it has been fantastic, except for that small period of time where running the Airport on the battery would cause it to kernel panic. Apart from that, I could not have been happier.

Fast forward to last night, when I got back from a grueling journey to the university library to view Into the Woods for my Linguistics 3600 class, and pulled out my computer. Lo and behold, the keyboard and trackpad have stopped functioing! I am typing this with an external USB keyboard and mouse, so I know the computer is not physically damaged, but this is rather annoying. I have an appointment for tomorrow evening at the Apple Store, where I hope to get this issue resolved in a timely fashion.

Parking Tag Woes

The University of Utah has a tiered pricing scheme for all their parking lots, meaning that if you want a “good” parking space, you have to pay two or more times more than if you were complacent with a “decent” parking space. That is highway robbery >:(

At SLCC, a year of parking is $20 and you can park in any space that isn’t reserved for faculty.

Summer School

It is very likely that I will be taking classes this semester in an attempt to get some kind of degree within the next 12 months. Unfortunately, these classes are not at a convenient location. Even more tragically, I need to get out there four times a week. Either I drive or I rely on public transporation.

According to my calculations, it takes 90 minutes to get to school on the bus, whereas it takes just 20 by horseless carriage. Still, having a free pass for the bus > paying more for gas.

The joy of keeping old emails around

So I was going through some really old emails (1998, actually) and came across this gem I sent to a friend of mine who wouldn’t stop forwarding junk mail.

How about you send me only a fraction of the e-mail you get? That’s your e-mail, not mine, so please don’t send it to me.

Secondly, spam is not only annoying, but an incredible waste of time (mind and yours). Frankly, I don’t enjoy these quotes as much (probably the reason why I am not on his mailing list, I’d assume) as you obviously do. It takes me longer to download the mail messages you send me than it does to read them, and that royally ticks me off. If you’re going to send it to me, at least make it something that I’d at least remotely like to read.

Here, for your information, is a short list of things that I do NOT want to see:

  • Messages that contain, anywhere in the message body, the word FORWARD. This means no messages like "forward this to 15 people and you will win the lottery" or "send this to everyone in your address books because I want to see how much Internet bandwidth I can waste with this message" or any other permutations.
  • Rupert’s Quote of the Day. ‘Nuff said, I think.
  • Messages that have anything to do with making money, like "we are tracking this e-mail and we will pay $1 for everyone you send it to." The fact is, NOBODY has the ability to do this. Period. It’s like trying to find out the previous owner of a penny; that information just doesn’t exist. And even though e-mail addresses accumulate in the endless message headers that go along with these messages (often longer than the message itself) do in fact end up in the possession of a person who has made such a promise, they have NO WAY ON EARTH of finding out your real name, street address, or even what STATE you live in. I hope I’m making myself perfectly clear here. E-Mail is founded with the idea of letting the people who use it to hide their personal information from people who might be able to use or exploit that information.

The ONLY exception to all of this is if you have a funny and/or interesting story that is of some mental or spiritual GAIN. If it’s a story that makes you go, "Hmm…." yeah, I’d like to see it. But you also have to face the fact that much of the information on the Internet is FORGED. That means it is Fake. By that I mean hoaxes, of which you have sent me many. This has a lot to do with the big paragraph above, so if you have forgotten already, just scroll up and read it again.

Like I have said before, use the Forward button SPARINGLY. In fact, the number of times I have used the forward button in the two and a half years I have been online could be counted on ONE HAND. Twice is all. "Oh well that means you don’t like to share good stories or blah blah…" That is entirely untrue. I use something called Cut and Paste, and I remove those stupid ">"s from the beginning of each line. Easier to read, no pointless headers, just what I want them to read, and that’s it.

I bet you’re going to look at this novel I’ve written and fire back the now-expected response, "Whateveh!!!" well, go ahead, but be warned I now have a filter on my e-mail box that automatically picks out e-mails with a "Fwd:" in the subject line.

Ah, the memories. I didn’t even remember writing this.

Sorry for the long hiatus. I am in the middle of hell finals week, so things are a little hectic around these parts.

Oh, and the German april fools page is here.