Ungrounded Outlet

Ever since Nintendo released the DS (or, at least, a few months after), I’ve been having to constantly talk myself out of buying one. I’m not sure why, really. I’m not a gamer. Actually, that is why. More than most other systems, handhelds tend to emphasize games that you can pick up and play for a few minutes at a time. Those are exactly the kinds of games I want to play. Once I started reading reviews for Kirby Canvas Curse and Mario Kart, my desire to own this particular handheld grew even stronger. I mean honestly: have you ever played a Mario Kart game that wasn’t incredibly fun?

So, for a while now, every time I’ve gone into a store that sold one of the things, I’d have a drawn-out conversation with myself about how there was really no need to get a DS, I’d probably stop playing with it after a week, and it was way too much money to spend on a toy. This week, in Best Buy (picking up a USB thumb drive because I finally decided I need one), I couldn’t talk myself out of it. Not even, “Wait for the DS Lite so you don’t waste your money on last year’s tech, you stupid idiot!” worked this time. The damn thing was calling to me across the shelves (I think I should probably see a professional). So I dropped a few hundred dollars and picked up a DS along with Kirby, Mario Kart, and Meteos.

So far, I have no buyer’s remorse whatsoever (except about the DS Lite, but I knew I’d feel stupid about that). The games are really, really, really, really fun. I’ve already wasted several hours trying to get good at Mario Kart (I suck. Hard.). I’ve also invested some time (though not nearly as much) in the other two games I bought.

Now, I need to talk my friends into buying some DSes for a little bit of hot multiplayer action. Foursomes. You know what I’m talkin’ about.

And for anyone who has never played Meteos, it left me about as jumpy as playing One on the original Playstation. I’m not sure I like that game. It’s bad for the nerves.

In case you want to have fun with an easy mark in Mario Kart, my friend code is 390911 362281

The recent Dilbert storyline has revolved around a woman wanting to get an engineer to approve her plan, which seems to be pretty dumb.

Today’s strip, in particular, reminds me of many conversations Jason and I had with our roommate, Andrew.

Wow. Those were the days! (Note: This image is an unauthorized copy because the official archive will delete it in a month. Stupid archive.)

A month or two ago, I decided to kick my caffeine habit. I decided that sleeping better and drinking fewer soft drinks couldn’t possibly be a bad thing. So I’ve mostly been caffeine-free, save for the rare occasions when I was really sleepy and needed to stay awake. Driving from Florence to Charleston springs immediately to mind.

This week has been kind of rough. I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep this weekend (which is generally when I make up whatever sleep I missed out on during the week) and I had trouble sleeping Monday night. Combine this with 10+ hour days at work (we’re chasing a deadline at the moment: such is the way of the software industry) and I’m having trouble. Yesterday after I got home, I was totally exhausted. I wanted to just go to bed right then. Sadly, I had to do laundry. I couldn’t get it to try and ended up going to bed after 11:00!!

So today, I had trouble focusing. Which is why I really fell off the caffeine wagon. Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew, and even Coke BlãK are all the reasons that I feel kind of shaky and sick to my stomach right now. But, I got a lot of work done today which was sort of the whole point of the thing. However, when the left over caffeine in my system prevents me from sleeping tonight, I’m sure I’ll regret it.

Anyway, the whole point of this story is to mention that Coke BlãK is terrible. After three bottles of water, I still had an aftertaste in my mouth. It has all the bad tastes of coffee without any of the good ones. My money would have been much better spent on Frappuccino. But still, it was an adventure in new products! It just seems that all the former products are better. Does that make me old?

Getting back to the BlãK, I’ll be unloading a bottle on a coworker who wants to try it tomorrow. That will leave me with two which I’m willing to give away to anyone who wants to actually come get it. :) No free shipping.

There’s a Slashdot article about a comparison between PINE and GMail. PINE is a text based, terminal mode email program that’s fairly popular on Unix systems. I used it myself when I was running Linux; it can’t be beat for quick, no hassle access to your inbox.

Anyway, one poster went into detail about his elaborate setup for using PINE. It boiled down to that he can get to his e-mail from just about any system: everything from the super computers in the research lab to a PSP. He can even access his e-mail by transmitting the data over ham radio.

In order to always have SSH access, he keeps a copy of PuTTY, a free SSH program for Windows, on a USB stick that he always has with him.

In response to that, an anonymous coward posted, “…but since he’s carrying putty [sic] like it’s an epi-pen, he’ll likely have SSH access.”

It’s probably because I’m friends with Ashley, but I thought that was hilarious and worth pointing out to my non-Slashdot-reading audience.

According to Greg Schechter, a programmer working on some of Vista’s new 3D stuff, the Vista version of Solitaire is written in DirectX. In the context of the article, I have to assume that this means it will do cool 3D things when you flip the cards.

When you consider all the Vista features that OS X had first, it’s nice to see that Microsoft is innovating somewhere.

I’m mostly joking. Some of Vista’s announced feature set seems pretty swanky (granted, they’ve removed the really kick ass features, but that’s life). When I end up with an Intel Mac in a year or two, I might even buy a Vista license to dual-boot it. Though, that assumes that there’s a certified WDDM driver available for the Mac video card.

As near as I can tell, the best parts of Vista rely on the graphics card, so I wouldn’t consider it worthwhile if I couldn’t use those.

Check this out! It’s the disassembled source for Megaman! (I found it here while reading about a cool Megaman speed run.)

Okay, it’s not terribly useful if you don’t know 6502 assembly. Don’t feel bad; I don’t know it either. But I still think it’s a cool look at the internals of a game which has a very real and unbreakable bond with my childhood.

Well, to be honest, that game would have been Megaman 2. But this is close enough.

My apartment is as clean as it’s been in months.

If only I had someone to invite over.

Though, honestly, no one would want to hang out here. It’s 80 freaking degrees!

I hate April 1st. The entire Internet becomes completely and utterly useless. Slashdot’s pink today. Pink.

As an addendum to last night’s post, the water started came back on a little before midnight. The moment was clearly marked in my memory because that’s when the toilet tank refilled and it freaked me out for a second. But now there’s people all over Charleston with a few months worth of bottled water. So, good for them.

Also, KH II is pretty dang good. The story is completely inscrutable at this point; but that’s really to be expected.